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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1385 ***
+
+LIN McLEAN
+
+By Owen Wister
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
+page.
+
+Always yours,
+
+OWEN WISTER
+
+Philadelphia, 1897
+
+
+
+
+HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+
+In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
+upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
+one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
+world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
+in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
+dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
+indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
+Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
+some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing
+day. The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef
+round-up, not yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding
+bachelors of the saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's
+credit on the ranch books.
+
+“What's the matter with some variety?” muttered the boy in his blankets.
+
+The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
+from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
+upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
+bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
+south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
+River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
+forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
+mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
+riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside
+the mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
+impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so
+it wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush
+and the yellow, vanishing plains.
+
+“Variety, you bet!” young Lin repeated, aloud.
+
+He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that
+made his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and
+limped blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was
+always more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the
+fork from Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
+shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
+his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
+shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
+water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
+returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
+breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+
+“Bugged up to kill!” exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+
+“He sure has not shaved again?” another inquired, with concern.
+
+“I ain't got my opera-glasses on,” answered a third.
+
+“He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache,” said a fourth.
+
+“My spring crop,” remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, “has
+juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
+which wanders out of your face.”
+
+“Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man,” said the
+other.
+
+But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+
+Him Lin McLean at once addressed. “I was wantin' to speak to you,” said
+he.
+
+The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. “I
+understand you're tired of work,” he remarked.
+
+“Who told you?” asked the bewildered Lin.
+
+The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. “Well, I have a way
+of taking things in at a glance,” said he. “That's why I'm foreman, I
+expect. So you've had enough work?”
+
+“My system's full of it,” replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+thinking, he added, “And I'd like my time.”
+
+Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+
+“It's good we're not busy,” said the foreman.
+
+“Meanin' I'd quit all the same?” inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+
+“No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+post before it gets hot.”
+
+The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek,
+and the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
+formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
+the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
+cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.
+
+“So-long!” he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might
+never be going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+demonstrative by habit.
+
+“Going to stop long at Washakie?” asked one.
+
+“Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now,” another mentioned.
+
+“If there's a new girl,” said a third, “kiss her one for me, and tell
+her I'm handsomer than you.”
+
+“I ain't a deceiver of women,” said Lin.
+
+“That's why you'll tell her,” replied his friend.
+
+“Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?” asked the cook,
+grieved to lose him.
+
+“I'm after some variety,” said the boy.
+
+“If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!”
+ shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+
+This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+
+“So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?” said the
+foreman.
+
+“Brought my tooth-brush,” said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+“Going to Denver?”
+
+“Why, maybe.”
+
+“Take in San Francisco?”
+
+“Sounds slick.”
+
+“Made any plans?”
+
+“Gosh, no!”
+
+“Don't want anything on your brain?”
+
+“Nothin' except my hat, I guess,” said Lin, and broke into cheerful
+song:
+
+   “'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'”
+
+They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
+bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses,
+upward and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind
+lay the deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees
+like bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also
+to the edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step
+farther away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed
+together over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple
+the great country which lay sunk beneath.
+
+“A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place,” said Lin to the
+foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. “She's sure there,
+though,” he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew
+thoughtful. “Shucks!” said he then, abruptly, “where's any joy in
+money that's comin' till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o'
+spot-cash.”
+
+He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him.
+Thus they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to
+Fort Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+
+His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away
+on his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+entertainment--a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to
+attend the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending
+to some visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to
+watch the ring of painted naked savages.
+
+The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. “What's he quitting his
+job for?” he asked the foreman.
+
+“Same as most of 'em quit.”
+
+“Nothing?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Been satisfactory?”
+
+“Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with
+a horse.”
+
+“And worthless,” suggested the post-trader.
+
+“Well--not yet. He's headed that way.”
+
+“Been punching cattle long?”
+
+“Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most
+a year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte
+Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the
+fracture was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the
+hog-ranch across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker
+to tell you about that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went
+up over on to Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting
+outfit on Galena Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested
+in some Dutchwoman up there, but she had trouble--died, I think they
+said--and he came down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to
+Mexico or Africa next.”
+
+“If you need him,” said the post-trader, closing his ledger, “you can
+offer him five more a month.”
+
+“That'll not hold him.”
+
+“Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+I've got to see his room is fixed up for him.”
+
+“The bishop!” said the foreman. “I've heard him highly spoken of.”
+
+“You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man.”
+
+“He's better than that; he's a man,” stated the foreman--“at least so
+they tell me.”
+
+Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a
+visit from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+wolf-dance this afternoon--red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was
+not only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went
+to look at him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal
+service this Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers
+and their families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the
+agency doctor, the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three
+gamblers, the waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was
+there because she was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in
+blankets, with two royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of
+squatting Indian children, silent and marvelling; and, on the back
+bench, the commanding officer's new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin
+McLean.
+
+Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and
+pageant, his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught
+resting upon him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content
+with the other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him
+and the stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel
+and found the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when
+a cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left
+them late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of
+the Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among
+their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
+keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
+while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
+to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
+from round his neck.
+
+The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
+breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
+caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
+into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
+silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
+of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now
+it prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
+address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a
+plain suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union
+Pacific Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River,
+had despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
+
+Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+
+“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
+neck and kissed him.”
+
+The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+
+Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
+she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
+but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
+brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
+music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
+watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
+hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face
+and the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the
+alert, listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern
+how that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw
+morals, attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and
+they filled with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie
+went to sleep, and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same
+alert position till Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to
+sit down through the hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and
+all the people dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings,
+and the cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
+
+“What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?” inquired the lady, after a
+hundred yards.
+
+“Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?” asked Lin, absently.
+
+“No, indeed. What's them?”
+
+“Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too.” Mr. McLean fell silent
+again.
+
+“I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye,” said
+Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered
+away with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+
+Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+
+“Only,” protested Sabina, “I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out
+and--well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River
+politeness.”
+
+But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the
+afternoon. Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat
+levels of sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They
+splashed across the many little running channels which lead water
+through that thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no
+nearer, behind them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green
+trees, dwindled to a toy village.
+
+“My! but it's far to everywheres here,” exclaimed Sabina, “and it's
+little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do
+the talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?”
+
+“That's Little Wind River Canyon,” said the young man. “Feel like goin'
+there, Miss Stone?”
+
+“Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's.”
+
+So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+
+“When do your folks eat supper?” inquired Lin.
+
+“Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on.”
+
+“How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?”
+ Lin asked.
+
+“What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day,” said
+the lady.
+
+“Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+colonel's table,” Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. “That
+is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
+know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'.”
+
+“You're the teasingest man--” said Miss Stone, pouting. “I might have
+knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked.”
+
+“Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+out to-night.”
+
+“Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!” and Sabina giggled.
+
+A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+
+“Something like them partridges used to,” said Lin, musingly.
+
+“Partridges?” inquired Sabina.
+
+“Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are
+gone by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess.”
+
+Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+
+“We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times,” said Lin, his
+wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+advantage.
+
+“I expect you used to dance a lot,” remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+
+“Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?”
+
+Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+
+“Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?” she inquired next.
+
+“Why, sure,” said Lin, waking for a moment; “but I like your color best.
+A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's.”
+
+“Indeed, I don't think so!” exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant
+to perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+
+“Never?” said he. “It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water.
+It's different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in
+July--around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the
+islands. I've swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to
+board in Boston.” He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm.
+Suddenly all dreaminess left him.
+
+“I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?” he
+said.
+
+Miss Stone was at a loss.
+
+“I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston.”
+
+Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the
+post and her.
+
+“I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?” said she.
+
+“I ain't got no folks,” replied Lin, “barring a brother. I expect he is
+taking good care of himself.”
+
+“Don't you correspond?”
+
+“Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+nothin'.”
+
+Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
+rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she
+noticed him step to his own.
+
+“Why, I didn't know you were lame!” cried she.
+
+“Shucks!” said Lin. “It don't cramp my style any.” He had sprung on
+his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
+measure of his activity.
+
+“That's how,” said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. “No,”
+ Lin continued, “Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have
+a look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good
+enough for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot
+of years now. Whoop ye!” he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter
+at a jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+
+Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
+took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and
+found the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering
+dish of fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself
+that inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed
+Duxbury clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that
+she found others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and
+fifty miles from the railway, and men there were many and girls were
+few.
+
+The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with
+resignation, knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them.
+Lin climbed up beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+
+“Don't get full, Lin,” said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+store.
+
+“My plans ain't settled that far yet,” replied Mr. McLean.
+
+“Leave it out of them,” said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
+the stage.
+
+It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
+the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
+Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
+pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
+over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+
+“When do yu' figure on comin' back?” inquired the driver.
+
+“Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell,” said Lin. “About a
+month, I guess.”
+
+He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
+during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
+sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you
+were? But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the
+bottom of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided
+it was a suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them
+to change their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and
+unharness. Then they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace
+was spliced with rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground,
+the bishop proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles.
+They crossed through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines,
+and, reaching Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That
+afternoon the stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform
+at Green River; this was the route in those days before the mid-winter
+catastrophes of frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was
+going west. His robes had passed him on the up stage during the night.
+When the reverend gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short
+moment, and then laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+
+“I can understand how you swear sometimes,” he said to Lin McLean; “but
+I can't, you see. Not even at this.”
+
+The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+
+“Good-bye and good luck to you,” continued the bishop, giving his hand
+to Lin. “And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting
+full' out of your plans?”
+
+Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. “I don't guess I can, sir,” he
+said. “I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see,” he added.
+
+“That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
+in the same place.”
+
+He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He
+walked up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright
+lights of the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way
+piano-music sounded through one of the many open doors.
+
+“Wonder if the professor's there yet?” said Lin, and he went across the
+railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into
+the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin
+did not join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a
+dealer and a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were
+painted sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares.
+The legend “Jacks pay” was also clearly painted. The player placed chips
+on whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards
+(quite fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton
+case made with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of
+chips rose high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was
+lessened by one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had
+much better have joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of
+the dealer met the eye of the player. After that slight incident the
+player's chip pile began to rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer
+made admiring comments on such a run of luck. Then the player stopped,
+cashed in, and said good-night, having nearly doubled the number of his
+gold pieces.
+
+“Five dollars' worth,” said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings
+of fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then,
+singularly enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars
+behind the game.
+
+“I guess I'll leave the train go without me,” said Lin, buying five
+dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+
+During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised
+and sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin
+lost--just as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of
+eyes early in the evening.
+
+When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was
+all back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with
+his hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his
+fingers came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by
+this hour must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+
+“I'm following it, you bet,” he declared, kicking the rail. “Not yet
+though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+Boston.” He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked
+freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. “And I guess Boston'll
+have to get along without me for a spell, too,” continued Lin. “A man
+don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin'
+with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that
+hog chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank,
+he'd say to me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit
+o' clothes and--no, sir, you bet!”
+
+Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly
+down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals,
+the great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its
+locomotive moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed
+steaming to its place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted,
+heavily bumping and parting.
+
+“Hello, Lin!” A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+
+“Hello!” responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+
+“They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it.” Honey
+offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+
+“Bruck my leg,” corrected Lin, “if that's what they meant.”
+
+“I expect that's it,” said Honey. “You've had no other trouble?”
+
+“Been boomin',” said Lin.
+
+From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+
+“Wher're yu' bound?” inquired Honey.
+
+“East,” said Lin.
+
+“Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west.”
+
+“That just suits me,” said Lin.
+
+The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that
+wall Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents
+freshly through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from
+locomotive to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion
+and slowly rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and
+the bells of the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose
+great dull-red cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union
+Pacific locomotives sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like
+ships at sea.
+
+Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between,
+as their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding.
+Mutual whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+
+“What are yu' doing at present?” Lin inquired.
+
+“Prospectin'.”
+
+Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy
+Lin. To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk
+of his friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He
+saw himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down
+a bag of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand
+him in exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded
+over, and heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue
+water that twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk
+check. He had his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country
+to him, his eye fell casually upon a mile-post: “Omaha, 876.” He began
+to watch for them:--877, 878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+
+“What are yu' laughin' about?” asked Honey.
+
+“Oh, the wheels.”
+
+“Wheels?”
+
+“Don't yu' hear 'em?” said Lin. “'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'.
+'Variety, variety.'”
+
+“Huh!” said Honey, with scorn. “'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it.”
+
+“You're no poet,” observed Mr. McLean.
+
+As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of
+the window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+sulkily, “Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
+yu' in Evanston?” And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
+friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+
+By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends,
+forgot prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed
+north In Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose,
+and came to Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek.
+Here the berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and
+the bears in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually
+with the season, making variety in the otherwise even life of the
+prospectors. It was now August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making
+mud-pies for sixty days. But the philosopher's stone was not in the wash
+at that placer, nor did Lin gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the
+nail of his thumb. Then they heard of an excitement at Obo, Nevada, and,
+hurrying to Obo, they made some more mud-pies.
+
+Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, “Lin,
+wher're yu' goin'?”
+
+And Lin always replied, “East.” This became a signal for drinks.
+
+For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights
+of untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with
+falling waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation
+presides over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof
+of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The
+mean ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot
+of mange. No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry,
+unimportant ugliness.
+
+There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting
+of the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable.
+Now and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about
+and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water.
+Passing each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned
+pair of overalls the same label, “Levi Strauss, No. 2,” with a picture
+of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly
+struggling to split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label
+just like that too, and when he considered all things he laughed to
+himself. Then, having stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would
+return to his ditch. As autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy
+gravel they were sunk in. He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his
+boots, and hated Obo, Nevada. But he held himself ready to say “East”
+ whenever he saw Honey coming along with the bottle. The cold weather
+put an end to this adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow,
+through which the sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the
+two friends drifted southward.
+
+Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the
+dirt. It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze.
+But this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than
+Nevada. Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them
+found a little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite
+froze one day.
+
+“We're seein' the country, anyway,” said Honey.
+
+“Seein' hell,” said Lin, “and there's more of it above ground than I
+thought.”
+
+“What'll we do?” Honey inquired.
+
+“Have to walk for a job--a good-payin' job,” responded the hopeful
+cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+
+Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the
+simpler prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in
+Boston between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this
+qualification, the apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa,
+and liked him. Lin made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of;
+and, as the mild weather began, he materially increased the apothecary's
+business by persuading him to send East for a soda-water fountain. The
+ladies of the town clustered around this entertaining novelty, and while
+sipping vanilla and lemon bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of
+the town discovered that whiskey with soda and strawberry syrup was
+delicious, and produced just as competent effects. A group of them were
+generally standing in the shop and shaking dice to decide who should
+pay for the next, while Lin administered to each glass the necessary
+ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a little more steadily than
+had been its wont, and he divided with the penniless Honey.
+
+But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the
+new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his
+feet, was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the
+dance-hall at the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next
+day but one.
+
+The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had
+white eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you
+spoke pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried
+to beat your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what
+made him so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and
+every gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get
+up a race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon
+opened a bank account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a
+silver-inlaid one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle
+richly stamped. Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the
+drug-store and inquire, “Lin, wher're yu' goin'?”
+
+But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water
+fountain with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season
+of fine sand and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung
+heavily over man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling
+with joy; the little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and
+shrank to a succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus
+bloomed everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the
+sand. There were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste
+very good; but if you drank from the standing pools where the river
+had been, you repaired to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of
+wandering players came dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa,
+played a brass-band up and down the street, and announced the powerful
+drama of “East Lynne.” Then Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that
+lie between there and Chelsea, and of the sea that must look so cool.
+He forgot them while following the painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel;
+but, going to bed in the back part of the drug-store, he remembered how
+he used to beat everybody swimming in the salt water.
+
+“I'm goin',” he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+inspected his bank account. “I'm sure goin',” he repeated, blowing the
+light out, “and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!” for he had
+often thought of the bishop's story. “You bet!” he remarked once more in
+a muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+
+“I'd pull out with yer,” he said, “only I can do business round Yuma and
+westward with the pinto.”
+
+For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and
+was in his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through
+Denver to Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for
+some months. Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a
+buffalo coat for his brother--something scarce to see in these days.
+
+“Frank'll have to get along without it,” he observed, philosophically,
+and took the next eastbound train.
+
+If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft,
+gray hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not
+the majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa,
+with its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a
+little more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are
+not understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn
+at Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of
+there was east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important
+stopping-place. In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and
+silence prevailed throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston
+without change. Had not home memories begun impetuously to flood
+his mind, he would have felt himself conspicuous. Town clothes and
+conventions had their due value with him. But just now the boy's
+single-hearted thoughts were far from any surroundings, and he was
+murmuring to himself, “To-morrow! tomorrow night!”
+
+There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin
+for thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached
+the next day one or two of them commented that he was the most
+attractive-looking man they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness,
+and wide-open, jocular eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly
+conscientious wild animal, there was nothing remarkable about young
+Lin except stage effect. The conductor had been annoyed to have such
+a passenger; but the cow-puncher troubled no one, and was extremely
+silent. So evidently was he a piece of the true frontier that curious
+and hopeful fellow-passengers, after watching him with diversion, more
+than once took a seat next to him. He met their chatty inquiries with
+monosyllables so few and so unprofitable in their quiet politeness that
+the passengers soon gave him up. At Springfield he sent a telegram to
+his brother at the great dry-goods establishment that employed him.
+
+The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung
+by hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off
+and his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long
+after, Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods
+used to be above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton.
+“Faneuil's next,” he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten
+home-knowledge shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated
+near said, “Beg pardon?” but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious
+Lin, with his forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed
+into sight, and soon after they were running in the darkness between
+high walls; but the cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be
+seen. When the porter announced “Boston,” he started up and followed
+like a sheep in the general exodus. Down on the platform he moved along
+with the slow crowd till some one touched him, and, wheeling round, he
+seized both his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.
+
+There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce
+civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted
+resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by;
+and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and
+smiled gently to herself.
+
+But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had
+risen with his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the
+paying-tellers of banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at
+the Parker House was president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal
+the cow-puncher to these shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would
+not stay very long. Of course he was glad to see him again, and he would
+take him to dine at some obscure place this first evening. But this was
+not Lin's plan. Frank must dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank
+demurred, saying it was he that should be host.
+
+“And,” he added, “they charge up high for wines at Parker's.” Then for
+the twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+
+“You're goin' to take your grub with me,” said Lin. “That's all right, I
+guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like
+as if father was livin'--(his voice softened)--and here to see me come
+home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can
+yu' spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off
+with steamed Duxbury clams.” The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where
+the coin made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, “I suppose
+Swampscott's there yet?”
+
+“Yes,” said Frank. “It's a dead little town, is Swampscott.”
+
+“I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow,” Lin pursued.
+
+“Oh, that's been pulled down since--I forget the year they improved that
+block.”
+
+Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+first and last home they had ever had.
+
+“Seventy-nine is when it was,” continued Frank. “So you can save the
+trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott.”
+
+“I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway,” said the cow-puncher in his
+offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+
+They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+surveyed the younger's appearance.
+
+But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+“After to-morrow,” said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder,
+“yu' can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu'
+pretty close, Frank.”
+
+Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+the stress became too great. “Lin,” said he, “while you're running with
+our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know.”
+
+It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+
+The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+shoulder. “You've made it plain,” he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+eyes down into Frank's. “You've explained yourself fairly well. Run
+along with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round
+and causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these
+things at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu'
+need to. I guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu'
+see me around on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable
+to close your jaw up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that
+to your crowd than you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got
+for a brother.”
+
+Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences
+had occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked
+him on his glumness.
+
+Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the
+bright, hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the
+graveyard he saw a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel,
+weeping.
+
+“There ain't nobody to do that for this one,” thought the cow-puncher,
+and looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at
+the woman.
+
+She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief
+was shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place
+goodbye. So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless
+past. When she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter
+from the street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly
+lump of flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in
+Swampscott. He spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but
+her act of kneeling he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some
+hours he hung about the little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the
+salt water where he used to swim.
+
+“Yu' don't belong any more, Lin,” he miserably said at length, and took
+his way to Boston.
+
+The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly
+gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and
+a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a
+ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed
+to numb his good humor.
+
+When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs
+of approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization
+was utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and,
+galloping among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner
+took on that alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As
+the stage took him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty
+miles or so, shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual
+tones, “Hello, Lin, where've you been at?”
+
+At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+was hearty.
+
+“It took a week for my robes to catch up with me,” he said, laughing.
+Then, in a little while, “How was the East?”
+
+“First-rate,” said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+reverting--at any rate, just now--to their last talk at Green River, and
+the advice he had then given.
+
+“I trust your friends were all well?” he said.
+
+“I guess they was healthy enough,” said Lin.
+
+“I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city.”
+
+“Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect,” Lin replied.
+
+The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had
+no notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+
+“Mr. Bishop,” the cow-puncher said, “how was that about that fellow you
+told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks,
+and they--well there was his father saw him comin'”--He stopped,
+embarrassed.
+
+Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed
+them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just
+now, what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man
+gravely.
+
+“Have yu' got a Bible?” pursued Lin. “For, excuse me, but I'd like yu'
+to read that onced.”
+
+So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time
+at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone
+so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes
+from the bishop's face.
+
+“How long has that there been wrote?” he asked.
+
+He was told about how long.
+
+“Mr. Bishop,” said Lin, “I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry,
+down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen
+a man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the
+elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!”
+
+“Well,” said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles,
+“I am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been
+finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived.”
+
+Lin meditated. “I guess that could be,” he said. “Yes; after that yu've
+been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till
+lately, I guess that could be.”
+
+Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he
+was delivering the fulness of his heart to. “And come to think,” he
+concluded, “it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
+big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
+sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and
+it'll not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in
+a stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
+here” (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), “seein' it
+onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.
+Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River.”
+
+The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away
+from Lin. Knowing his man--for had he not seen many of this kind in his
+desert diocese?--he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the
+cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should
+now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would
+join it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River
+country. More business was over there, and better chances for a man to
+take up some land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort
+Washakie, the bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned
+several leaves down, carefully avoiding any page that related of
+miracles.
+
+“You need not read it through, you know,” he said, smiling; “just
+read where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts.
+Goodbye--and always come and see me.”
+
+The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards
+Wind River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving
+dot went over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the
+parade-ground, thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly
+soul, he shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+
+It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news.
+Meeting him to-day had been unforeseen--unforeseen and so pleasant that
+the thing had never come into my head until just now, after both of us
+had talked and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+
+I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's
+approach to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come
+precipitately out of the door.
+
+“I'm turruble pleased to see yu',” he had said, immediately.
+
+“What's happened?” said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+
+And he piteously explained: “Why, I've been here all alone since
+yesterday!”
+
+This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+
+Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock
+to him?
+
+“As to that,” replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, “when a man expects
+lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course.
+But when he has figured on finding company--say--” he broke off (and
+vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)--“when you're lucky enough to
+catch yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to
+yourself for hours.--You've not seen anything of Tommy?” he pursued with
+interest.
+
+I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over
+here with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the
+week's mail for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man
+to do but sit and sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could
+have endured that, but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and
+gone to Buffalo. It was circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered
+the money there must be in the circus business? Tommy had taken the
+outgoing letters early yesterday. Nobody had kept him waiting. By all
+rules he should have been back again last night. Maybe the stage was
+late reaching Powder River, and Tommy had had to lay over for it.
+Well, that would justify him. Far more likely he had gone to the circus
+himself and taken the mail with him. Tommy was no type of man for
+postmaster. Except drawing the allowance his mother in the East gave
+him first of every month, he had never shown punctuality that Lin could
+remember. Never had any second thoughts, and awful few first ones. Told
+bigger lies than a small man ought, also.
+
+“Has successes, though,” said I, wickedly.
+
+“Huh!” went on Mr. McLean. “Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+she”--Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive--“why, even that
+girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant
+he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of 'em
+retains interest in Tommy.”
+
+Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was
+glad to see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of
+Pitchstone Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad
+care of himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft
+in general. He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East
+by a route of his own discovering--and from his account of that journey
+it had proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the
+years of our friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the
+body he had always richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a
+season's absence and spoke those invariable words which all old friends
+upon this earth use to each other at meeting--“You haven't changed, you
+haven't changed at all!”--I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's
+boy soul. And so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the
+nature of Tommy (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him
+and took an intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I
+was than he, after all.
+
+There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved,
+and on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+firewood.
+
+“Look at those sorrowful toothpicks,” said he: “Tommy's work.”
+
+So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse
+way on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+yet.
+
+“It's good yu' come this forenoon,” Lin said to me. “I'd not have had
+the heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!”
+
+Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened
+a number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+the stew.
+
+“Tommy'll be hot about these,” said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs.
+“He don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods--pickled salmon and
+truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he
+showed me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he;
+'too bad my damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on
+me ever since Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail.
+'You swore too heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may
+have travelled half a mile by the time I'd found four nests.”
+
+I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly--and in Wyoming they were
+always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and
+I enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite
+established in my own soul at that time--and perhaps that is the reason
+why it is the only time I have ever known which I would live over again,
+those years when people said, “You are old enough to know better”--and
+one didn't care!
+
+Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+
+“What do you think of--” I began, and stopped.
+
+I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of
+digestion. I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it
+occurred to me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before
+this, had he known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began
+differently.
+
+“What is the most important event that can happen in this country?” said
+I.
+
+Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his
+back, dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one
+limp, open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over
+him.
+
+“I want to know what you consider the most important event that can
+happen in this country,” said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+clearness.
+
+The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth
+that I recognized to be meant for the word “War.” Then he rolled over so
+that his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+
+“I don't mean country in the sense of United States,” said I. “I mean
+this country here, and Bear Creek, and--well, the ranches southward for
+fifty miles, say. Important to this section.”
+
+“Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks,” said Lin. “Yu' might leave
+a man rest till then.”
+
+“I want your opinion,” said I.
+
+“Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion,” said Lin. “Seems like yu' merely
+figure on givin' me yours.”
+
+“Very well,” said I. “Very well, then.”
+
+I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for
+some minutes now.
+
+“I expect a railroad would be more important,” said Mr. McLean,
+persuasively, from the floor.
+
+“Than a rise in steers?” said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. “Oh
+yes. Yes, a railroad certainly would.”
+
+“It's got to be money, anyhow,” stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. “Money
+in some shape.”
+
+“How little you understand the real wants of the country!” said I,
+coming to the point. “It's a girl.”
+
+Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+
+“A girl,” I repeated. “A new girl coming to this starved country.”
+
+The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. “Well,”
+ said he, “yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
+with dinner and sleep.” He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
+expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
+entertainment, and palls. “Starved,” he presently muttered. “We are kind
+o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
+mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
+she is!” he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at
+me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. “Sidney, Nebraska.”
+
+I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her
+name--but his geography of her was accurate.
+
+One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+received a letter--no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all
+see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me.
+The letter was signed,
+
+“Ever your afectionite frend.
+
+                           “Katie Peck,”
+
+and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should
+like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. “Like to come and be
+like old times” filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers
+with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on
+Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she
+does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned,
+and old girls had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss
+Molly Wood (the Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in
+order the cabin and the children of the Taylors, while they were gone
+forty-five miles to the stage station to meet their guest.
+
+“Well,” said Lin, judicially, “Miss Wood is a lady.”
+
+“Yes,” said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+
+Lin thoughtfully continued. “She is--she's--she's--what are you laughin'
+at?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to,
+do you?”
+
+“Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed
+better, I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like
+gettin' kissed against their wishes--and you know it.”
+
+“But the point would rather seem to be that she--”
+
+“Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or
+I'll--I'll talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard
+me do yet.”
+
+“Impossible!” I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+
+“As to point--that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+right.” He ruminated for a moment. “She has about scared all the boys
+off, though,” he continued. “And that's what you get by being refined,”
+ he concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+
+“She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice,” said I. “He
+was there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk
+Creek. Didn't seem particularly frightened.”
+
+“Oh, well, nothin' alarms him--not even refinement,” said Mr. McLean,
+with his grin. “And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+would us poor punchers do?”
+
+“You have me cornered,” said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence,
+Lin on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon
+a scene my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring
+had passed over it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels
+undulated in emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this
+moment of to-day was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the
+dimples of the foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun
+melted among them. Around the doubling of the creek in the willow
+thickets glimmered skeined veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The
+stream poured turbulently away from the snows of the mountains behind
+us. It went winding in many folds across the meadows into distance
+and smallness, and so vanished round the great red battlement of wall
+beyond. Upon this were falling the deep hues of afternoon--violet, rose,
+and saffron, swimming and meeting as if some prism had dissolved and
+flowed over the turrets and crevices of the sandstone. Far over there I
+saw a dot move.
+
+“At last!” said I.
+
+Lin looked out of the window. “It's more than Tommy,” said he, at
+once; and his eyes made it out before mine could. “It's a wagon. That's
+Tommy's bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish,” Lin
+severely commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least
+be a homestretch.
+
+Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+best understood by cows--“Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!” But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets
+are worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can
+produce these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such
+sounds ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when
+the last cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already
+befallen) the yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle
+appeared to appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that
+was plain even at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch,
+after all. The bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned
+beside the wagon.
+
+“Showin' off,” remarked Lin. “Tommy's showin' off.” Suspicion crossed
+his face, and then certainty. “Why, we might have knowed that!” he
+exclaimed, in dudgeon. “It's her.” He hastened outside for a better
+look, and I came to the door myself. “That's what it is,” said he. “It's
+the girl. Oh yes. That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for.
+She come by the stage all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been
+too tired to travel, yu' see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his
+buckskins--they're four-year-olds. Or else--anyway, they laid over last
+night at Powder River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu'
+see, holdin' the mail back on us twenty-four hours--and that's your
+postmaster!”
+
+It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new
+girl, I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+
+Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade
+drew near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention
+focused upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear
+made a cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly
+chirruped to his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For
+Tommy wore upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in
+the Wild West. Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might
+have conducted a show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person
+before the eyes of princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake
+skin for a hat-band, he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of
+buckskin, and concluded with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there
+were things between his shirt and his heels, but all leather and deadly
+weapons. He had also a riata, a cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently
+employed these Spanish names for the objects. I wish that I had not lost
+Tommy's photograph in Rocky Mountain costume. You must understand that
+he was really pretty, with blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a graceful
+figure; and, besides, he had twenty-four hours' start of poor dusty Lin,
+whose best clothes were elsewhere.
+
+You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present
+us to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook
+the office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. “Good friends
+of mine, and gentlemen, both,” said he to Miss Peck; and to us, “A lady
+whose acquaintance will prove a treat to our section.”
+
+We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its
+being a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+
+“Well,” she exclaimed to Tommy, “I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+eggs you've spoke so much about.”
+
+I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+merely to exclaim, “Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been
+laying since Christmas!” and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy
+try to find all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore
+embarrassment to the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels
+of the wagon. He looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his
+features assumed a rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+
+“Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em.”
+
+“Well, if that ain't!” cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin
+as he now assisted her to descend.
+
+“All?” faltered Tommy. “Not the four nests?”
+
+“I've had three meals, yu' know,” Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+
+“I helped him,” said I. “Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+ham. Forgive us, please.”
+
+“I declare!” said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+eyes upon me. “You're a case, too, I expect.”
+
+But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot.
+In her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned
+back to Lin McLean. “You carry that,” said she, and gave the pleased
+cow-puncher a hand valise.
+
+“I'll look after your things, Miss Peck,” called Tommy, now springing
+down from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+
+“You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!” said the lady,
+but favoring him with a look from her large eyes. “There's plenty of
+gentlemen here.” With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the
+cabin, he following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear.
+“Well, I guess I'm about collapsed!” said she, vigorously, and sank upon
+one of Tommy's chairs.
+
+The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought
+a basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have
+done something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone
+to the stable with the horses.
+
+“Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?” inquired Mrs.
+Taylor.
+
+“Not now,” her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such
+a quick look at me.
+
+“We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine,” said Lin, gallantly. “Our
+climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead.”
+
+“You're a case, anyway!” exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+
+The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and,
+throwing one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with
+cheerful talk. She steadily watched him--his face sometimes, sometimes
+his lounging, masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to
+her, Taylor departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor,
+busy with supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at
+having her old friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+
+“Sickness has changed poor Katie some,” said she. “But I'm hoping she'll
+get back her looks on Bear Creek.”
+
+“She seems less feeble than I had understood,” I remarked.
+
+“Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired
+and down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But
+Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day
+she's real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends.”
+
+“How long will she stay?” I inquired.
+
+“Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as
+Taylor knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February,
+for you always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times.
+Katie'll be most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was
+sixteen the very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got
+some good man for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance,
+for there was a big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real
+scandalous, getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely
+at all. And so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the
+railroad eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with
+feeding them big trains day and night.”
+
+“A biscuit-shooter!” said I.
+
+Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. “Well,” said she then,
+“I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+stations.”
+
+I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+
+If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for,
+and will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you
+sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You
+discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through
+doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in
+a room of tables and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing
+attention, a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began
+immediately a swift chant. It hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow.
+In this inexpressible ceremony the name of every dish went hurtling into
+the next, telescoped to shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your
+Amazon in the middle, it dislocated her, and she merely went back and
+took a fresh start. The chant was always the same, but you never learned
+it. As soon as it began, your mind snapped shut like the upper berth
+in a Pullman. You must have uttered appropriate words--even a parrot
+will--for next you were eating things--pie, ham, hot cakes--as fast as
+you could. Twenty minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with
+your pile-driven stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is
+not dieted with greater velocity, and “biscuit-shooter” is a grand word.
+Very likely some Homer of the railroad yards first said it--for what
+men upon the present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we
+Americans?
+
+If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding
+in response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her
+into convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but
+allowed the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly
+now and then, “I declare!” and “If you ain't!” Lin was most certainly
+engaging, if that was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled
+upon her, and he half closed them now and then to look at her more
+effectively. I suppose she was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say
+that she was handsome in a large California-fruit style. They made a
+good-looking pair of animals. But it was in the presence of Tommy that
+Master Lin shone more energetically than ever, and under such shining
+Tommy was transparently restless. He tried, and failed, to bring
+the conversation his way, and took to rearranging the mail and the
+furniture.
+
+“Supper's ready,” he said, at length. “Come right in, Miss Peck; right
+in here. This is your seat--this one, please. Now you can see my fields
+out of the window.”
+
+“You sit here,” said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was
+between them. “Them's elegant!” she presently exclaimed to Tommy. “Did
+you cook 'em?”
+
+I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+
+“Indeed!” said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of
+his ranch, his potatoes, his horses. “And do you punch cattle, too?” she
+inquired of him.
+
+“Me?” said Tommy, slightingly; “gave it up years ago; too empty a
+life for me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own
+property”--Tommy swept his hand at the whole landscape--“he takes to
+more intellectual work.”
+
+“Lickin' postage-stamps,” Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+
+“You lick them and I cancel them,” answered the postmaster; and it does
+not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+
+“That's one on you,” she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she
+went for a little walk.
+
+“Katie was ever a tease,” said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. “She'll get
+used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,”
+ said he.
+
+Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was
+only when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men
+choosing various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a
+while. We lay in the blank--we had spread on some soft, dry sand in
+preference to the stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the
+contemplative influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+
+“Ever notice,” said he, “how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?”
+
+I did not feel sure that I had.
+
+“Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get
+to require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick.”
+
+I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+on.
+
+“Ever notice,” said he, “how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+get to increasing the dose?”
+
+“Yes,” said I.
+
+“Him roping six bears!” pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+“Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter
+other men'll get? Why's that, now?”
+
+I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+
+“Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they--”
+
+Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I
+sank beyond his reach.
+
+In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at
+the drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the
+daytime there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and
+hearing the news. There I heard how things were going everywhere,
+including Bear Creek.
+
+All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was
+a great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than
+the school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and
+showed it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town
+buying presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for
+a necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him.
+Too bad Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only
+yesterday to get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big
+joke on Lin McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew
+the location of, and Tommy got the bear.
+
+Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They
+had been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was
+in visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering
+and branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in
+camp. Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely
+watching Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way
+quite so much.
+
+“Lin,” said the Southerner, “I reckon you're failin'.”
+
+Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+
+“A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants,” pursued the Virginian.
+The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+young pride.
+
+“And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food,” his ingenious friend
+continued, slowly and gently.
+
+“I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name,” said Lin.
+
+“It ain't sca'cely hon'able,” went on the Virginian, “to waste away
+durin' the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If
+he is paid to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge
+or pull away.”
+
+“It's not many dodge my rope,” boasted Lin, imprudently.
+
+“Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her.”
+
+Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. “I'll
+improve,” said he, “if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so
+handy. Has she promised to be your sister yet?” he added.
+
+“Is that what they do?” inquired the Virginian, serenely. “I have never
+got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!”
+
+And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+
+But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory
+is to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted
+than most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he
+chose.
+
+“Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors',” he now told the
+camp. “He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General
+Miles, and General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in
+conversation, and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck
+appeared interested in his statements.”
+
+“What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?” demanded Lin.
+
+“Visitin' Miss Wood,” answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. “You'd ought to
+write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is
+gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and
+you would have the runnin' all to yourself.”
+
+“I'll fix him yet,” muttered Mr. McLean. “Him and his wars.”
+
+With that he rose and left us.
+
+The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was
+puzzled. Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman
+had been a transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty
+romances, where the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and
+moved on. Nor had his affairs been of the sort to teach a young man
+respect. I am putting it rather mildly.
+
+For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after
+that began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was
+a serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A
+man was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some
+day and found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No
+interest, no surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty
+owed him fifty dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the
+round-up, and he, Lin, would get his time and rustle altogether some
+five hundred dollars. Then there was his homestead claim on Box Elder,
+and the surveyors were coming in this fall. No better location for a
+home in this country than Box Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it
+needed was a house and ditches and buildings and fences, and to be
+planted with crops. Such chances and considerations should sober a
+man and make him careful what he did. “I'd take in Cheyenne on our
+wedding-trip, and after that I'd settle right down to improving Box
+Elder,” concluded Mr. McLean, suddenly.
+
+His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not
+remotely imagined such a step.
+
+“Marry her!” I screeched in dismay. “Marry her!”
+
+I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but
+I emphasized both thoroughly.
+
+“I didn't expect yu'd act that way,” said the lover. He dropped behind
+me fifty yards and spoke no more.
+
+Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+
+But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry
+or wounded--resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as
+of his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for
+a while how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon
+abandoned the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+
+“Lin,” I began, slowing my horse, “you must not think about what I
+said.”
+
+“I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects,” said he, and slowed his own
+horse.
+
+“Oh, look here!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Well?” said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+
+“Astonishment makes a man say anything,” I proceeded. “And I'll say
+again you're too good for her--and I'll say I don't generally believe in
+the wife being older than the husband.”
+
+“What's two years?” said Lin.
+
+I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation
+of the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+estimate her own age.
+
+“She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month,” said Lin, with
+sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. “I promised her
+a bear-skin.”
+
+“Yes,” said I, “I heard about that in Buffalo.”
+
+Lin's face grew dusky with anger. “No doubt yu' heard about it,” said
+he. “I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told
+the truth to any of 'em--but her.” He looked at me with a certain
+hesitation. “I think I will,” he continued. “I don't mind tellin' you.”
+
+He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+of rope that hung on his saddle.
+
+“She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come
+home though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to
+see what she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start
+whining, and she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and
+lifts up a cub and holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a
+person. And she rubbed her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped
+her, and she cuffed the cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away
+they starts rolling all three of 'em! I watched that for a long while.
+That big thing just nursed and played with them little cubs, beatin' em
+for a change onced in a while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd
+sit up solemn and look all around so life-like that I near busted. Why,
+how was I goin' to spoil that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for
+I'd have hated to have Mrs. Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She
+claimed I was scared to shoot.”
+
+“After you had told her why it was?” said I.
+
+“Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has
+the skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+Tommy.”
+
+“But since she has taken you?” said I.
+
+“She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy.”
+
+I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand
+also the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these
+differed from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand
+was why Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque,
+a career in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a
+present lacking context--indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy
+would win!
+
+“Lin,” said I, “I'm backing him.”
+
+“Back away!” said he. “Tommy can please a woman--him and his blue
+eyes--but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better
+than he knows about killin' Injuns.”
+
+“Did you hear about the Crows?” said I.
+
+“About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+believed any Crows--” he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+
+“What's the matter now?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, nothing.” He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+extent. “What made yu' say that to me?” he asked, presently.
+
+“Say what?”
+
+“About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better.”
+
+“I don't.”
+
+“Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!”
+
+“Colts ought not to marry,” said I.
+
+“Sure!” said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the
+Virginian's black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next
+the Taylors' that Lin changed the lively course of thought that was
+evidently filling his mind.
+
+“Tell yu',” said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to
+the black horse, “for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the
+same. She likes him dangling round her so earnest--him that no body ever
+saw dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does
+he get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the
+Miss Woods of this world,” he added, defiantly--“except at long range.”
+
+At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her--whether
+the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company;
+whatever had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair
+looked curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and
+her cheeks were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood
+talking sweetly to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was
+no doubt that he had been “raised good enough” to appreciate her, no
+matter what had been his raising!
+
+Lin greeted every one jauntily. “How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+Tommy?” said he. “Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path.”
+
+“I declare!” said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and
+then he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, “I hadn't been goin'
+to mention it to the ladies until it was right sure.”
+
+“You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck,” said Tommy. “There's lots of men
+here.”
+
+“Who's afraid?” said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+“Oh,” said Lin, “maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh.”
+
+“Of course,” said Tommy.
+
+“Hello, Tommy!” called Taylor from the lane. “Your horse has broke his
+rein and run down the field.”
+
+Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+
+“I must be cooking supper now,” said Katie, shortly.
+
+“I'll stir for yu',” said Lin, grinning at her.
+
+“Come along then,” said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+
+Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+Virginian, and she looked at me.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, “I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+wasn't new any more it might become dull!”
+
+“Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either,” said I.
+
+Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. “But mightn't it become
+just--just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very--determined,
+you know?”
+
+“Only one is determined,” said the Virginian
+
+Molly looked inquiring.
+
+“Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to.”
+
+“Dear me, what a notion!”
+
+“No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy--well, Tommy is considered harmless, ma'am.
+A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never let
+Tommy get ahaid of him that way.”
+
+“It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!” exclaimed Molly.
+
+“Why, ma'am,” said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+“where is any countin' without some love?”
+
+“Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?”
+
+“I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference
+between thinkin' and feelin', ma'am.”
+
+I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her
+cheeks. But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+
+“You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+the jiste!”
+
+“All cow-punchers--” I attempted to resume.
+
+“Quit now, Lin McLean,” shouted the voice, “or I'll put yus through that
+window, and it shut.”
+
+“Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face.
+And now I'm going to quit and cough back.”
+
+“Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?” inquired the Virginian
+as Molly rose. “You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh.”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Molly, blithely. “And you'll come?” she added to me.
+
+But I was on the Virginian's side. “I must look after my horse,” said I,
+and went down to the corral.
+
+Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon.
+The canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where
+I walked the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where
+the thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across
+the silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he
+and General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when
+supper-time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account
+to Mrs. Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he
+was saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+
+“But when you get old?” said she.
+
+“We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am,” said he, simply.
+“But I have a reason, and I am saving.”
+
+“Give me the flowers,” said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on
+the table as Lin came hurrying out.
+
+“I've told her,” said he to the Southerner and me, “that I've asked her
+twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you.” He took the
+Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I
+began to discern something quite definite at supper.
+
+“Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this,” he
+said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+
+“Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?” said the Virginian.
+
+“Chap come into the round-up this afternoon,” said Lin. “But he was
+rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square.”
+
+“Of course they wouldn't,” said Tommy, haughtily.
+
+“Oh, there's nothing in it,” said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+
+“Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?”
+
+Mrs. Taylor had not.
+
+“Lin,” said the Virginian, “did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?”
+
+“You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in
+the mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good--not in her class o'
+sports, smugglin' and such.”
+
+“I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption,” said the
+Virginian.
+
+“Talking of mountains,” said Tommy, “this range here used to be a great
+place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the
+red sons-of-guns.”
+
+“You bet,” said Lin. “Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+and quit him, too?”
+
+“I reckon,” replied the Virginian, “that the bull-fighter wore better.”
+
+“Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin',” said Lin. “My! but I'd like
+to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened.”
+
+The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made
+of the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that
+Tommy had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his
+campaigns. But when the hour came for those visitors who were not
+spending the night to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me,
+and I noticed the Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed
+diversion.
+
+“Don't seem to make anything of it,” whispered Taylor to Tommy, “but the
+ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck.”
+
+“Why, I'll just explain--” began Tommy.
+
+“Don't,” whispered Lin, joining us. “Yu' know how women are. Once they
+take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+him and me” (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) “must go back to
+camp, for we're on second relief.”
+
+“And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+house,” said Taylor.
+
+“In that case,” said Tommy, “I--”
+
+“Yu' see,” said Lin, “they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+nights ago.”
+
+“It ain't!” cried Tommy.
+
+“Why, of course it ain't,” drawled the ingenious Lin. “But that's what I
+say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from
+our own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these
+nervous notions.”
+
+“Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+Riverside,” repeated Taylor, “but--”
+
+“But just kind of stay here,” said Lin.
+
+“I will!” exclaimed Tommy. “Of course, I'm glad to oblige.”
+
+I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than
+its results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He
+was to be kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they
+proposed to visit his empty cabin and play tricks--but that would be
+too childish, even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his
+occasional partner in mischief.
+
+“In spite of the Crows,” I satirically told the ladies, “I shall sleep
+outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season.”
+
+The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid
+a hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the
+galloping horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and
+crossed to her little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in
+that blessed country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+
+I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long,
+wild yell now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no
+pistol--nothing. In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought
+was “House! House!” and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to
+the cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I
+understood. I saw the Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw
+his teeth as he smiled. I hastened to my blankets, and returned more
+decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round
+the cabin, crazy with their youth. The door was opened, and Taylor
+courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He fired at the sky
+immediately.
+
+“B' gosh!” he roared. “That's one.” He fired again. “Out and at 'em.
+They're running.”
+
+At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots
+by the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted
+and joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about
+with them, helping the din.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Taylor!” said a voice. “I didn't think it of you.” It was Molly
+Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+
+“Stop, friends!” said Taylor, gasping. “She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+I'd hate to have Bobbie--”
+
+“Speak to your papa,” said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+
+“Well, I'll be gol-darned,” said Taylor, surveying his costume, “if Lin
+McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!”
+
+“Where has Tommy got?” said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+“Didn't yus see him?” said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word
+in all this.
+
+We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+
+There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+
+“Well,” murmured the Virginian to himself, “if I could have foresaw, I'd
+not--it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self.”
+
+He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything,
+and presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent
+cabin, mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the
+night at Riverside, after all.
+
+Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+one when you think of it.
+
+I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian
+how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
+bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the
+peace. She was astride the horse he had brought for her.
+
+“Yes, he beat Tommy,” said the Virginian. “Some folks, anyway, get what
+they want in this hyeh world.”
+
+From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than
+Tommy.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+
+Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there
+was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this
+that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+fertility of the soil--when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+made--with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying
+to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+here--with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that
+anything could fly--with wings. Then we would lead such a man out and
+show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if he
+was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him
+the glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+meet him.
+
+“For purposes of amusement,” he said, “I'll admit anything you claim
+for this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?”
+
+“You shall,” I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+something to him “for purposes of amusement.”
+
+“You fellows come up with me to my office,” said the Governor. “I'll
+look at my mail, and show you round.” So we went with him through the
+heat and sun.
+
+“What's that?” inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+
+“That is our park,” said I. “Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi--” I checked
+myself.
+
+But Ogden said “with irrigation” for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+come.
+
+We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his
+letters over.
+
+“Here you are, Ogden,” said he. “Here's the way we hump ahead out here.”
+ And he read us the following:
+
+                           “MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188--
+
+“Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+
+“Sir,--Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad
+to furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully
+in Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover,
+as I said, merely my necessary expenses--say $350 (three hundred and
+fifty dollars)--for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity of
+rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction
+of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+
+                           “I am, respectfully yours,
+
+                                “Robert Hilbrun”
+
+“Will the Legislature do it?” inquired Ogden in good faith.
+
+The Governor laughed boisterously. “I guess it wouldn't be
+constitutional,” said he.
+
+“Oh, bother!” said Ogden.
+
+“My dear man,” the Governor protested, “I know we're new, and our women
+vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would
+fly right into my back hair.” Barker was also new as Governor.
+
+“Do you have Senators here too?” said Ogden, raising his eyebrows.
+“What do they look like? Are they females?” And the Governor grew more
+boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+men were certainly “out of sight”. Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+
+“I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself,” he said.
+
+“That's an idea!” cried the Governor. “Nothing unconstitutional about
+that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars--”
+
+“I'll put up a hundred,” said Ogden, promptly. “I'm out for a Western
+vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen.”
+
+The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help
+of some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised.
+“He won't care,” said the Governor, “whether it's a private enterprise
+or a municipal step, so long as he gets his money.”
+
+“He won't get it, I'm afraid,” said Ogden. “But if he succeeds in
+tempting Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you
+call those people there on the horses?”
+
+We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and
+looking out over the plain toward Fort Russell. “That is a cow-puncher
+and his bride,” I answered, recognizing the couple.
+
+“Real cow-puncher?”
+
+“Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean.”
+
+“Real bride?”
+
+“I'm afraid so.”
+
+“She's riding straddle!” exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+glasses. “Why do you object to their union being holy?”
+
+I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+precipitately and against my advice.
+
+“I suppose he knew his business,” observed Ogden.
+
+“That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her--and
+know him.”
+
+Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at
+meeting with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked
+at her, and I instantly knew that Lin--the fool!--had confided to her my
+disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+
+“Good-day, Mr. McLean,” said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his
+horse.
+
+“How're are yu', doctor,” said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+at Drybone. “Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean,” pursued the husband.
+
+The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to
+a Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at
+her, extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her
+big, dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+
+“I say,” Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+flesh image, “I'm glad I came.” The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man
+that wore them.
+
+“Well,” said he, “I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in
+town? Circus come yet?”
+
+“No,” said I. “Are you going to make a long stay?”
+
+The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. “Till
+we're tired of it, I guess,” said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house
+lady, the biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty,
+irrepressible spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him,
+and now she was going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at
+her too, thoughtfully.
+
+“Say, Lin,” I said, “if you stay here long enough you'll see a big
+show.” And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I
+told him of the rain-maker.
+
+“Shucks!” said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+entertained at our venture. “Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me
+come in”; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised,
+he was hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+
+“Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess,” spoke the
+image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I
+know that Lin did. The image continued: “Some folks and their money are
+soon parted”--she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I
+was sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable
+opinion of her--“but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged
+ap!” This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says
+the husband immediately started off on a run.
+
+At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+railroad ties, exclaiming: “Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+came.”
+
+“That's who she is!” said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+once. “I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!”
+ he continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated “Bigamy!” “Lots of
+them marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on
+to a new man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on--”
+
+“One moment, I beg,” said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. “What does the
+law--”
+
+“Law?” said the Governor. “Look at that place!” He swept his hand
+towards the vast plains and the mountains. “Ninety-five thousand square
+miles of that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen
+yet on top of the Rocky Mountains.”
+
+“I see,” said the New-Yorker. “But--but--well let A and B represent
+first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does A know
+about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?”
+
+“Can't say,” the Governor answered, jovially. “Can't generalize. Depends
+on heaps of things--love--money--Did you go to college? Well, let A
+minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared--”
+
+“Oh, come to lunch,” I said. “Barker, do you really know the first
+husband is alive?”
+
+“Wasn't dead last winter.” And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss
+Katie Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was
+wooed and won by a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder,
+a bar-tender, a freight hand, and was then hauling poles for the
+government. During his necessary absences from home she, too, went
+out-of-doors. This he often discovered, and would beat her, and she
+would then also beat him. After the beatings one of them would always
+leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in small-talk until
+Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. “Lusk,” said the Governor,
+finishing his story, “cried around the saloons for a couple of days, and
+then went on hauling poles for the government, till at last he said
+he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was round
+Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay
+with Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+McLean.”
+
+“You'll notice,” said the Governor, “how she has got him under in three
+weeks. Old hand, you see.”
+
+“Poor Lin!” I said.
+
+“Lucky, I call him,” said the Governor. “He can quit her.”
+
+“Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?”
+
+“She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn
+pretty quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip.
+Hello! here comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New
+York, Mr. Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden.” The
+Governor's eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+
+“Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+acquaintance,” said the signal-service officer.
+
+“Jode, when is it going to rain?” said the Governor, anxiously.
+
+Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He
+has the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in--I think
+he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton Manigault
+Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then, but his
+health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black; his
+face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a
+spout--the same narrow size all the way down--and his voice was as
+dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had
+constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with
+his dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted
+apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much
+satisfaction also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he
+came to see that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was
+published, and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen,
+along with other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and
+he passed his careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+
+He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina
+impressiveness. “There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing
+pressure,” he said.
+
+“Well, that's what I thought,” said the joyous Governor, “so I'm going
+to whoop her up.”
+
+“What do you expect to whoop up, sir?”
+
+“Atmosphere, and all that,” said the Governor. “Whole business has got
+to get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker.”
+
+“Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir,” said Jode, who enjoyed Barker
+as some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we
+had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter
+had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers
+with him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position.
+“Have your joke, sir,” he said, waving a thin, clean hand, “but I
+decline to meet him.”
+
+“Hilbrun?” said the Governor, staring.
+
+“If that's his name--yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and the
+Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow.”
+
+“Glory!” said the Governor. “Well, I suppose not. I see your point,
+Jode. I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure.
+All very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow--too
+slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+does its business by is out of date.”
+
+“I am quite serious, sir,” said Jode. “And let me express my
+gratification that you do see my point.” So we changed the subject.
+
+Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond
+those who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed
+curiosity about Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in
+the street that he was disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the
+enterprise. “But the boys would fly right at it and stay with it if the
+round-up was near town, you bet,” said he.
+
+He was walking alone. “How's Mrs. McLean to-day?” I inquired.
+
+“She's well,” said Lin, turning his eye from mine. “Who's your friend
+all bugged up in English clothes?”
+
+“About as good a man as you,” said I, “and more cautious.”
+
+“Him and his eye-glasses!” said the sceptical puncher, still looking
+away from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor.
+That excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his
+teeth shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+
+“Telegram from Hilbrun,” he shouted; “be here to-morrow”; and he
+hastened up.
+
+“Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+private,” added Ogden. “Great, isn't it?”
+
+“You bet!” said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+excitement mollified Mr. McLean. “Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?” said
+he.
+
+“Never. Have you?”
+
+Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+
+“We're going to show the telegram to Jode,” said the Governor; and he
+and Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+
+“Well, I must be getting along myself,” said Lin; but he continued
+walking slowly with me. “Where're yu' bound?” he said.
+
+“Nowhere in particular,” said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a
+little more.
+
+“You're going to meet the train to-morrow?” said he.
+
+“The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?”
+
+“Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?”
+
+“Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years.”
+
+“Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's
+the rule. Don't you?”
+
+“I shouldn't wonder.”
+
+“I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?”
+
+“No. But it'll be fun to see him try.”
+
+“Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow.”
+
+“See you to-morrow, Lin.”
+
+He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure.
+A hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after
+him, pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the
+club, telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had
+inquired for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that
+he had lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying “I told
+you so” to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had
+not come so home to me until our little walk together just now along the
+boards.
+
+At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty--a
+particular drink, the Allston cocktail. “It's the bitters that does the
+trick,” he was saying, but saw me and called out: “You ought to have
+been with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read
+it through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with
+his anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get
+out he sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so
+I said, 'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And
+Jode, he quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your
+despatch is genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!” And
+the Governor slapped his knee. “Why, he's so set against Hilbrun,” he
+continued, “I guess if he knew of something he could explode to stop
+rain he'd let her fly!”
+
+“No, he wouldn't,” said I. “He'd not consider that honorable.”
+
+“That's so,” the Governor assented. “Jode'll play fair.”
+
+It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise--a game between a
+well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan.
+And it was the charlatan had our sympathy--as all charlatans, whether
+religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary
+and the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the
+cart, and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned
+out an unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not
+remember afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it
+was a hot day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he
+put into the cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance
+to the eye. He desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his
+apparatus in the building provided for him; and we set out for it at
+once. It was an untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant
+might cut a hole in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for
+the first time--a tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak
+mouth. “This is Mr. Lusk,” said the rain-maker; and we shook hands,
+Ogden and I exchanging a glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill
+Street--or Capitol Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has
+grown fuller of pomp and emptier of prosperity--and I thought we made an
+unusual procession: the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the
+way to the barn; the cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his
+packed-up mysteries; McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious
+bigamy; and in the rear, Odgen nudging me in the ribs. That it was the
+correct Lusk we had with us I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy,
+vacant appearance, strong-bodied and shiftless--the sort of man to weary
+of one trade and another, and make a failure of wife beating between
+whiles. In Twenty-fourth Street--the town's uttermost rim--the Governor
+met us, and stared at Lusk. “Christopher!” was his single observation;
+but he never forgets a face--cannot afford to, now that he is in
+politics; and, besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a
+man to whom you owe ten dollars.
+
+“So you've quit hauling poles?” said the Governor.
+
+“Nothing in it, sir,” said Lusk.
+
+“Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?” asked the
+rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+
+“What! going to throw your bombs through it?” said the Governor, smiling
+heartily.
+
+But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system,
+but a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. “Not that
+the bomb don't produce first-class results at times and under
+circumstances,” he said, “but it's uncertain and costly.”
+
+The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told
+us was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+hole, which saved delay. “And what day would you prefer the shower?”
+ said Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+
+“Any day would do,” the Governor said.
+
+This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+business to detain him from witnessing the shower--though it seemed to
+me that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable
+as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry
+and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+
+I saw a sorry spectacle in the street--the bridegroom and the bride
+shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a
+scarlet parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of
+purchase on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with
+splendor, like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as
+well have been behind, and his bearing was so different from his
+wonted happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+“Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk.” But it was “Mrs. McLean” I said, of course.
+She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, “Come on, Lin,”
+ something like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a
+good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, “It takes a woman to know
+what to buy for house-keepin,”; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared
+him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in
+keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider
+to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were
+only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but
+one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs.
+Lusk, perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant
+rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the
+north corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at
+all, haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
+
+On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing.
+The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the
+barn, snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be
+chlorine, the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part
+responsible; and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The
+world was as still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever;
+and the sky over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours.
+This tenacity in the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official
+pleasure. We could tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor
+reminded him that no rain was contracted for until the next day, he
+mentioned that the approach of a storm is something that modern science
+is able to ascertain long in advance; and he bade us come to his office
+whenever we pleased, and see for ourselves what science said. This was,
+at any rate, something to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him
+about five. Lin McLean joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering
+alone in the street, and he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on
+friends. I saw that he did not know how to spend the short recess or
+holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the society of others, and
+with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He had become converted
+to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing
+this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the
+signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the
+careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+
+“A hair hygrometer,” he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it.
+“The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of
+a prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the
+divided arc of--”
+
+“What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?” called out the Governor,
+who had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the
+tubes and dials. “What will this one do?” he asked, and poked at a wet
+paper disc. But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had
+to do with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention
+wandered, and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly
+revolved and set a number of dial hands going different ways. “Hi!” said
+the Governor, delighted. “Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air
+velocity in feet. Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What
+you'll need, Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes.”
+
+“I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor,” Jode retorted at once.
+“And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+there.” He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+crystal. “An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen,”
+ Jode continued--though none of us would have said anything like
+that--“but unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+corroborated, as you will find you must admit.” Jode's voice was almost
+threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers;
+I caught the fleeting sound of words like “meniscus” and “terrestrial
+minimum thermometer,” and I nodded punctually when Jode went through
+some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand--a
+series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service
+officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date
+of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible.
+“And I tell you,” Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, “there's
+no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,”--he was shrieking
+jubilantly--“there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!”
+
+We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. “Gee whiz!” said
+the Governor. “I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use.”
+
+We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+scientist. “That's what they all say,” he said. “I'll do my talking
+to-morrow.”
+
+“If any of you gentlemen, or your friends,” said Assistant Lusk,
+stepping up, “feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to
+accommodate you.”
+
+“What do yu' want this evenin'?” said Lin McLean, promptly.
+
+“Five to one,” said Lusk.
+
+“Go yu' in twenties,” said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived
+this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out--or
+what of it still survived his bride's shopping. “Will you hold stakes,
+doctor?” he said to the Governor.
+
+But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five
+to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and
+then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered
+our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next
+morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a
+universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes
+instantly whipped out his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and
+disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but
+was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+
+Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze
+anywhere, and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was
+freely offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so
+she might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed
+husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad
+of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented
+their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that
+it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
+
+The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside
+the hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube,
+the possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the
+extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one
+restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella.
+In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs.
+Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast
+progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the
+well-known legend, “I am somewhat of a liar myself.” And all the while
+the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the
+certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came
+from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with
+a chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new
+indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden,
+padded, dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They
+blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all,
+and ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those
+rapid, unconvincing weather changes of the drama.
+
+Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things
+on earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized
+upon Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger
+and acquaintance: “It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me”' And the
+crowd would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as
+he went proclaiming to the world. “A failure, sir! The fellow's an
+impostor, as I well knew. It's no half-inch!” Which was true.
+
+“What have you got to say to that?” we asked Hilbrun, swarming around
+him.
+
+“If you'll just keep cool,” said he--“it's only the first instalment. In
+about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest.”
+
+Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences
+and sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down
+door-steps, women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the
+chattering Jode flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge
+Burrage apostrophized Providence in his front yard, with the
+postmaster's label still pinned to his back. Nobody minded the sluicing
+downpour--this second instalment was much more of a thing than the
+first--and Hilbrun alone kept a calm exterior--the face of the man who
+lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an impressive glance at the audience.
+Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success I saw him put
+a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy
+leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate
+and proceeded toward him, extending the hand of congratulation. “Mr.
+Hilbrun,” said he, “I am Judge Burrage--the Honorable T. Coleman
+Burrage--and I will say that I am most favorably impressed with your
+shower.”
+
+“His shower!” yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+
+“Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?” said Lin McLean, grinning.
+
+“I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen,” said Jode, ignoring the
+facetious puncher.
+
+“You're mistaken,” said Hilbrun, sharply.
+
+“It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch,” said Lin.
+
+“If he's short he don't get his money,” said some ignoble subscriber
+
+“Yes, he will,” said the Governor, “or I'm a short. He's earned it.”
+
+“You bet “' said Lin. “Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+doctor, I'll chip--Shucks!” Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket;
+he remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now
+possessed possibly two dollars in silver, all told. “I can't chip
+in, doctor,” he said. “That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's
+filling up on the prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest
+show I've ever saw. You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!” And Lin
+clapped the rain-maker on the shoulder, exulting. He had been too well
+entertained to care what he had in his pocket, and his wife had not yet
+occurred to him.
+
+They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under
+half an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we
+stood talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to
+Jode, saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously
+with these, riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out
+the rain had flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from
+as far as thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a
+cloud. It staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” said the rain-maker, “I'm packed up, and my train'll
+be along soon--would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?”
+
+Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely
+performed his side of the contract.
+
+“I think different, gentlemen,” said he. “But I'll unpack and let that
+train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay
+me” (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the
+fence) “I'll flood your town.”
+
+In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in
+the total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards
+and precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+over.
+
+“I'm obliged,” said Hilbrun, simply.
+
+“If I had foreseen, gentlemen,” said Jode, too deeply grieved now to
+feel anger, “that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing
+your money through this--this absurd occurrence, I would have declined
+to help you. It becomes my duty,” he continued, turning coldly to
+the inebriated Lusk, “to hand this to you, sir.” And the assistant
+lurchingly stuffed his stakes away.
+
+“It's worth it,” said Lin. “He's welcome to my cash.”
+
+“What's that you say, Lin McLean?” It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+surged to the front.
+
+“I'm broke. He's got it. That's all,” said Lin, briefly.
+
+“Broke! You!” She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+preliminary howl.
+
+At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. “It's my darling
+Kate,” he said. “Why, Kate!”
+
+The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean;
+for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her
+first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin
+was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our
+benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the
+second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish,
+tearful, and affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian
+angel, indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous
+defiance at Lin. “Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you
+sage-brush bigamist!” is what the marvelous female said.
+
+“Bigamist?” repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. “I ain't,” he said to
+Ogden and me. “I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her.”
+
+“Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+before ever I come acrosst yus.”
+
+“You and him?” murmured the puncher.
+
+“Her and me,” whimpered Lusk. “Sidney.” He sat up with a limp, confiding
+stare at everybody.
+
+“Sidney who?” said Lin.
+
+“No, no,” corrected Lusk, crossly--“Sidney, Nebraska.”
+
+The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice.
+But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+
+“Who are yu', anyway--when yu' ain't drunk?” demanded Lin.
+
+“He's as good a man as you, and better,” snorted the guardian angel.
+“Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find.”
+
+“Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska--” Lin began.
+
+“No, no,” corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew--“Jim.”
+
+“Good-bye, gentlemen,” said the rain-maker. “That's the west-bound. I'm
+perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+Salt Lake City.”
+
+“You are?” shouted Lin McLean. “Him and Jim's going to work it again!
+For goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!”
+
+At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten,
+and ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his
+duties should detain him. But Jode went!
+
+“Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen,” said he to Ogden, McLean,
+and me, “and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure.”
+
+“Which way are yu' bettin'?” Lin asked.
+
+“With my principles, sir,” answered the little signal-service officer.
+
+“I expect I ain't got any,” said the puncher. “It's Jim I'm backin' this
+time.”
+
+“See here,” said I; “I want to talk to you.” We went into another car,
+and I did.
+
+“And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?” the
+puncher said.
+
+“Do you mean I ought to have--”
+
+“Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all
+the same. Yu' have good friends, and all that.” He looked out of the
+window. “Laramie already!” he commented, and got out and walked by
+himself on the platform until we had started again. “Yu' have good
+friends,” he pursued, settling himself so his long legs were stretched
+and comfortable, “and they tell yu' things, and you tell them things.
+And when it don't make no particular matter one way or the other, yu'
+give 'em your honest opinion and talk straight to 'em, and they'll
+come to you the same way. So that when yu're ridin' the range alone
+sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things over on top maybe of some
+dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about some fellow yu' know mighty
+well, 'There's a man is a good friend of mine.' And yu' mean it. And
+it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced in a while they're bound
+to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the man then--your good
+friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be. Standin' off, keepin' his
+mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail out. If he tried to show
+it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks! Circumstances have showed
+me the trail this time, you bet!” And the puncher's face, which had been
+sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly hand on my knee.
+
+“The trail's pretty simple,” said I.
+
+“You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu',” said Lin, with the air
+of having made a discovery, “when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs
+in this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his
+dyin'. I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell
+their wives.”
+
+“Never was married,” said I.
+
+“Well--no more was I. Let's go to bed.” And Lin shook my hand, and gave
+me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+
+At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western
+holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against
+rain--only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free.
+Indeed; the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine
+have a nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the
+sights: floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of
+the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of saints in robes speaking from heaven
+to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm-hand, and in
+the street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the
+new--or perhaps I should say the original--husband and wife.
+
+“She's corralled Sidney's cash!” said the delighted Lin. “He can't bet
+nothing on this shower.”
+
+And then, after all, this time--it didn't rain!
+
+Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased
+a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went
+somewhere else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the
+money, retained him with her.
+
+“Good luck to yu', Sidney!” said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+since Cheyenne. “I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married.” He
+paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that
+she threw after him.
+
+Jode also felt “a heap better.” Legitimate science had triumphed.
+To-day, most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a
+coincidence. South Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin
+the few dollars that I had lent the puncher.
+
+“And what will you do now?” I said to Lin.
+
+“Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+keep a single man.”
+
+
+
+A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+
+The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled
+it between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew
+absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with
+a slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be
+more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children
+to whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had
+put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom,
+and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely
+planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround
+him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed
+from a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into
+town from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the
+others, rounded the Capitol's enclosure, and, approaching with radiant
+countenance leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again
+greeted him with a hilarious “Hello, Doc!”
+
+Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several
+years, hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and,
+inquiring who might be the other riders behind, was told that they were
+Shorty, Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. “And dandies to
+hit town with,” Mr. McLean added. “Red-hot.”
+
+“I am acquainted with them,” assented his Excellency.
+
+“We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks,” the cow-puncher continued,
+“makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every
+day. So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to
+feed high.”
+
+Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+their coming rites.
+
+“We've soured on scenery,” he finished, in his drastic idiom. “We're
+sick of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time.”
+
+“Call on me,” remarked the Governor, cheerily, “when you're ready for
+bromides and sulphates.”
+
+“I ain't box-headed no more,” protested Mr. McLean; “I've got maturity,
+Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+That's my rule.”
+
+“That your rule, too?” inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye,
+and Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+expressionless upon their horses.
+
+“We ain't talkin', we're waitin',” observed Chalkeye; and the three
+cynics smiled amiably.
+
+“Well, Doc, see yu' again,” said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or
+came up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+unsuspecting Governor.
+
+“What's your hurry?” said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty
+manner. “Come along with me.”
+
+“Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?”
+
+“Christmasing,” replied Fate.
+
+“Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?”
+
+“Yes; I'm buying toys.”
+
+“Toys! You? What for?”
+
+“Oh, some kids.”
+
+“Yourn?” screeched Lin, precipitately.
+
+His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he
+held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. “Not mine, I'm happy
+to say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me
+uncle, and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think
+it's a girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these
+little folks at Christmas they'd be wondering--not the kids, they just
+break your toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder--'What's
+the matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on
+us?'--that's where the strain comes!” he broke off, facing Mr. McLean
+with another spacious laugh.
+
+But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran
+on exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
+intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+
+“That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a
+stick, and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too
+much, and you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie,
+and--well, I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in
+luck. Christmas don't trouble a chap fixed like you.”
+
+Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+
+“A chap fixed like you!” The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. “No,
+sure.” He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+going down the road. “That's a new idea--Christmas,” he murmured, for it
+was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+his first long trousers.
+
+“Comes once a year pretty regular,” remarked the prosperous Governor.
+“Seems often when you pay the bill.”
+
+“I haven't made a Christmas gift,” pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
+“not for--for--Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know anybody
+that has any right to look for such a thing from me.” This was indeed a
+new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.
+
+“Gee whiz!” said Barker, briskly, “there goes twelve o'clock. I've got
+to make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!”
+
+His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops
+with the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and
+he struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall
+some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made
+him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently
+watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his
+speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they
+took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and
+wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and
+met face to face with Mr. McLean.
+
+“The boys are seein' after my horse,” Lin rapidly began, “and I've got
+to meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu'
+see, and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--” Here
+Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. “Doc,
+I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know.”
+
+The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind,
+and was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
+selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a
+couple of dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an
+imperfect honesty that he said, “You'll help me a heap.”
+
+And Lin, quite sincere, replied, “Thank yu'.”
+
+So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man
+has been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall;
+the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as
+young as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known
+the cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without
+breeding contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder
+and drew him among the petticoats and toys.
+
+Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin
+saw them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations
+of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with
+that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal
+human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's
+brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children
+escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch
+and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
+rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
+sound of musical boxes.
+
+Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
+and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
+knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
+must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
+much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
+ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying
+that his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a
+step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily
+have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence,
+waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some
+infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the
+frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could
+make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and
+forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if
+he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while
+these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of
+him, he was locked outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural
+press of customers, long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing
+and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished,
+he was ready to go on to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean.
+He found him obliterated in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa
+Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
+
+“He looks livelier than you do,” said the hearty Governor. “'Fraid it's
+been slow waiting.”
+
+“No,” replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. “No, I guess not.”
+
+This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+“You never did lie to me,” he said, “long as I've known you. Well, never
+mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now.”
+
+At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. “Say Doc,” said he, “what do
+yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?”
+
+“A big practice--big enough to interfere with my politics.”
+
+“What else? Things and truck, I mean.”
+
+“Oh--nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like
+me.”
+
+“Don't they? Don't they?”
+
+“Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?”
+
+“Well--”
+
+“I believe you're in earnest!” cried his Excellency. “That's simply
+rich!” Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town “heeled
+for a big time,” finds that presents are all the rage, and must
+immediately give somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous
+Frontier! So thought the good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial
+misconception. “My dear fellow,” he added, meaning as well as possible,
+“I don't want you to spend your money on me.”
+
+“I've got plenty all right,” said Lin, shortly.
+
+“Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with
+you. You didn't expect anything from me?”
+
+“That ain't--that don't--”
+
+“There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+Here's our shop.” They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+counters. “Now,” pursued the Governor, “this is for a very particular
+friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?”
+
+They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision
+after one look. “That,” said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound,
+or, at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned
+that there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+
+The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. “I know
+that Tennyson is what she--is what's wanted,” he muttered; and, feeling
+himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture
+he took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand,
+found himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and
+the cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all
+people. Barker picked it up and gave it back. “No, no, no!” he said,
+mirthful over his own inclination to be annoyed; “you can't do that. I'm
+just as much obliged, Lin,” he added.
+
+“Just as a loan, Doc--some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash.”
+
+A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp
+young lady was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily
+for Tennyson's expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his
+discountenanced savings back into his clothes. Making haste to leave
+the book department of this shop, they regained a mutual ease, and
+the Governor became waggish over Lin's concern at being too rich. He
+suggested to him the list of delinquent taxpayers and the latest census
+from which to select indigent persons. He had patients, too, whose
+inveterate pennilessness he could swear cheerfully to--“since you want
+to bolt from your own money,” he remarked.
+
+“Yes, I'm a green horse,” assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; “ain't used to
+the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em.”
+
+From his face--that jocular mask--one might have counted him the most
+serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
+would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering
+body, but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean
+of old days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy
+ground. “I've got it!” he exclaimed; “give your wife something.”
+
+The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+“If you'll give me her name and address,” said he, with the future
+entirely in his mind.
+
+“Why, Laramie!” and the Governor feigned surprise.
+
+“Say, Doc,” said Lin, uneasily, “none of 'em ain't married me since I
+saw yu' last.”
+
+“Then she hasn't written from Laramie,” said the hilarious Governor, and
+Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. “Gee whiz!”
+ went on Barker, “I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!”
+
+But the mask fell now. “You're talking of his wife, not mine,” said the
+cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; “and, Doc, I'm going to
+say a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll
+never forget that day myself--but I don't want to be reminded of it.”
+
+“I'm a fool, Lin,” said the Governor, generous instantly. “I never
+supposed--”
+
+“I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way--in
+a way--” Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker,
+seeing how wistful his face had turned, waited. “But I ain't quite the
+same fool I was before that happened to me,” the cow-puncher resumed,
+“though maybe my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was
+better luck than a man like me had any call to look for.”
+
+The sobered Barker said, simply, “Yes, Lin.” He was put to thinking by
+these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+
+Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick,
+red cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
+knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle
+and took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife
+to the best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were
+confident he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival
+and beating him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the
+marriage was an inadvertence. “He jest bumped into it before he could
+pull up,” they explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's
+sporting blood, had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali.
+For the new-made husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that
+came upon him he tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before,
+and learned also how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink
+beneath the man in baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived
+innocent until this time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so
+that citizens in Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued
+shrewdly that men of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the
+strain had broken his endurance an unexpected first husband, named
+Lusk, had appeared one Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving,
+and exceedingly drunk. To the arms of Lusk she went back in the public
+street, deserting McLean in the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne
+saw this, and learned how she had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if
+intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too,
+and went about his business, ready to swagger at the necessary moment,
+and with the necessary kind of joke always ready to shield his hurt
+spirit. And soon, of course, the matter grew stale, seldom raked up in
+the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at work; so lately he had begun
+to remember other things beside the smouldering humiliation.
+
+“Is she with him?” he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the
+moral that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and
+revealed the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he
+quieted the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote
+about the house of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days,
+thus getting one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined
+his opinion of the family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker
+detailed these incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs.
+Lusk addicted to opium.
+
+“I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em,” said McLean, grimly, “if I
+strike Laramie.”
+
+“You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?”
+ Barker ventured.
+
+“Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only--yu' see now. A man gets tired
+pretending--onced in a while.”
+
+Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness
+of the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys.
+He had come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and
+well disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing
+with each other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of
+hurry to escape from that loneliness where his human promptings had been
+lodged with him useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale,
+and he with his pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of
+Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with,
+he stepped out with a brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and
+a foretaste of a good time coming that he put on his town clothes, after
+shaving and admiring himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate
+away and drank with a robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even
+himself at first. But the sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for
+all he could do. As he groped for the contentment which he saw around
+him he began to receive the jokes with counterfeit mirth. Memories took
+the place of anticipation, and through their moody shiftings he began
+to feel a distaste for the company of his friends and a shrinking from
+their lively voices. He blamed them for this at once. He was surprised
+to think he had never recognized before how light a weight was Shorty;
+and here was Chalkeye, who knew better, talking religion after two
+glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his friends' shortcomings
+mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont, changed at a stroke.
+“I'm celebrating no Christmas with this crowd,” said the inner man; and
+when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their hilarity he was gone.
+
+Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to
+meet a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station,
+buying a ticket for Denver.
+
+“Denver!” exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+
+“That's what I said,” stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+
+“Gee whiz!” went his Excellency. “What are you going to do there?”
+
+“Get good and drunk.”
+
+“Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?”
+
+“I'm drinking champagne this trip.”
+
+The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+inside the door.
+
+“And he says he's got maturity,” Barker muttered. “I've known him since
+seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along.” The
+Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+fool. “Yes, about eight. Or six,” said his Excellency, justifying
+himself by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen,
+supreme in length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling
+for an early mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished,
+he had mended the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and
+Lin's utter health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon
+overflowed with the pride of science, and over the bandages would
+explain the human body technically to his wild-eyed and flattered
+patient. Thus young Lin heard all about tibia, and comminuted, and other
+glorious new words, and when sleepless would rehearse them. Then,
+with the bone so nearly knit that the patient might leave the ward
+on crutches to sit each morning in Barker's room as a privilege, the
+disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out of the hospital and
+hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and variety waited for
+a languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was soon carried back
+with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's surgical rage was disarmed, the
+patient was so forlorn over his doctor's professional chagrin.
+
+“I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?” he had said, humbly,
+after a new week of bed and weights.
+
+“Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all.”
+
+“Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+son-of-a-gun?”
+
+You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all
+and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had
+missed the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected
+thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
+
+“He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,” said
+Barker. “Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again.”
+
+At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked
+the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin
+took Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw
+a saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher
+over there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly.
+In such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to
+enjoy without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he
+looked along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric
+lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried
+“Shine? Shine?” at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the
+right to get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of
+stopping at all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a
+few yards, and it was across the street. This one being attained and
+appreciated, he found that he must cross back again or skip number four.
+At this rate he would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre,
+and he stopped to consider. It was a German place he had just
+quitted, and a huge light poured out on him from its window, which the
+proprietor's father-land sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone
+among a well-set pine forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots
+and reached upward to Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held
+in his right hand forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a
+string of sausages that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American
+back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he
+had not changed since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered
+carefully the Hot Scotch question, and which side of the road to take
+and stick to, while the little bootblacks found him once more and cried,
+“Shine? Shine?” monotonous as snow-birds. He settled to stay over here
+with the south-side Scotches, and the little one-note song reaching his
+attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly
+sprang away.
+
+“Dare you to touch him!” piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+
+“Don't hit me,” said Mr. McLean “I'm innocent.”
+
+“Well, you leave him be,” said one.
+
+“What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?”
+
+“New!” said Billy, in scorn. “Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+is.”
+
+“He's a special!” shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. “He's got a
+badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer.”
+
+Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. “Dare you
+to arrest me!” said he.
+
+“What'll you give me not to?” inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+pockets, arms akimbo.
+
+“Nothing; I've done nothing,” announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and
+he, too, sped into the middle of the street.
+
+“What's he claim you lifted?” inquired the leader, with eagerness.
+“Tell him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!” they
+screamed to the special officer.
+
+“Say,” said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, “you're poor judges
+of a badge, you fellows.”
+
+His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+
+Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+window. “Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here,” said he,
+following his sprightly invention, “he'd get arrested himself.”
+
+This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+the last.
+
+“If it's your idea,” pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+cautious steps nearer the curb, “that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug--why, I'll
+get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar.”
+
+The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+
+“Easy!” wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+fascinated. “Not having three feet,” said the cow-puncher, always grave
+and slow, “I can only give two this here job.”
+
+“He's got a big pistol and a belt!” exulted the leader, who had
+precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+
+“You're a smart boy,” said Lin, considering him, “and yu' find a man out
+right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they
+fix the boots--and a dollar goes to the quickest through.”
+
+Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a
+boot, with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr.
+McLean.
+
+“That's a Colt.45 you've got,” ventured he.
+
+“Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe.”
+
+“I'm through!” sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+
+Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+
+“Will you kindly referee,” said he, forgivingly, to the leader, “and
+decide which of them smears is the awfulest?”
+
+But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+
+“Well, that saves me money,” said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket.
+“I guess you've both won.” He handed each of them a dollar. “Now,” he
+continued, “I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+dollar for the best shine.”
+
+The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played
+his mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out
+his beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+
+Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher
+perceived, and Billy no seasoned expert. “See here,” said Lin, stooping,
+“I'll show yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough
+to steer anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with
+a dry brush.”
+
+“Lemme,” said Billy. “I've got to learn.” So he finished the boot his
+own way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this
+event was also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both
+parties. So here was their work done, and more money in their pockets
+than from all the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and
+Billy did not wish for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune
+as soon as might be. Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window,
+drawn by curiosity near this new kind of man whose voice held them and
+whose remarks dropped them into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted
+leader had been unable to go away and nurse his pride alone.
+
+“Is that a secret society?” inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+badge.
+
+Mr. McLean nodded. “Turruble,” said he.
+
+“You're a Wells & Fargo detective,” asserted the leader.
+
+“Play your harp,” said Lin.
+
+“Are you a--a desperaydo?” whispered Towhead.
+
+“Oh, my!” observed Mr. McLean, sadly; “what has our Jack been readin'?”
+
+“He's a cattle-man!” cried Billy. “I seen his heels.”
+
+“That's you!” said the discovered puncher, with approval. “You'll do.
+But I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to
+do this night.”
+
+At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+
+“We--are--sworn--don't yu' jump, now, and give me away--sworn--to--blow
+off three bootblacks to a dinner.”
+
+“Ah, pshaw!” They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+
+“That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up--for I
+have it to do!”
+
+“Dare you to! Ah!”
+
+“And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+Cant'!”
+
+They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+
+“I can't waste my time on such smart boys,” said Mr. McLean, rising
+lazily to his full height from the window-sill. “I am goin' somewhere to
+find boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.”
+
+He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+
+On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few
+remarks. He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that
+would have led to conversation under almost any circumstances save
+these; but the minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole
+state of things for them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr.
+McLean in silence, at a wary interval, and with their mouths, during
+most of the journey, open. The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk,
+and the unusual dollars, wakened wide their bent for the unexpected,
+their street affinity for the spur of the moment; they believed slimly
+in the turkey part of it, but what this man might do next, to be
+there when he did it, and not to be trapped, kept their wits jumping
+deliciously; so when they saw him stop, they stopped instantly too, ten
+feet out of reach. This was Denver's most civilized restaurant--that one
+which Mr. McLean had remembered, with foreign dishes and private rooms,
+where he had promised himself, among other things, champagne. Mr. McLean
+had never been inside it, but heard a tale from a friend; and now he
+caught a sudden sight of people among geraniums, with plumes and white
+shirt-fronts, very elegant. It must have been several minutes that he
+stood contemplating the entrance and the luxurious couples who went in.
+
+“Plumb French!” he observed at length; and then, “Shucks!” in a key less
+confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. “They're
+eatin' patty de parley-voo in there,” he muttered, and the three
+bootblacks came beside him. “Say, fellows,” said Lin, confidingly, “I
+wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm
+after a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a
+fit. What do yu' say, boys?”
+
+That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+
+“Ah, you come along with us--we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose
+yer.” So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they
+clustered about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started
+obediently, and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+
+“Christmas is comin' now, sure,” said Lin, grinning to himself. “It
+ain't exactly what I figured on.” It was the first time he had laughed
+since Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with
+the new warmth in his heart.
+
+Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they
+went along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and
+then stole at him a doubtful look.
+
+The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and
+the oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and
+several choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient;
+and to witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket
+and its wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the
+guests a transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as
+frankly ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all
+grew fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr.
+McLean stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+
+“Have a cigarette?” said the leader, over his pie.
+
+“Thank yu',” said Lin. “I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me.” He had
+devised a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+
+“Chewin's no good at meals,” continued the boy. “Don't you use
+tobaccer?”
+
+“Onced in a while.”
+
+The leader spat brightly. “He ain't learned yet,” said he, slanting his
+elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. “But beer, now--I
+never seen anything in it.” He and Towhead soon left Billy and his
+callow profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that
+silenced him, and set him listening with all his admiring young might.
+Nor did Mr. McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this
+knowledge, which seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+
+“I'll be goshed,” he thought, “if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now.”
+ But now the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive
+apprenticeship. “Hello, boys!” he said, “that theatre's got a big start
+on us.”
+
+They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. “This man here will look out
+for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning.”
+
+They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of
+the highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced
+so helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain
+Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other
+scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. The
+Captain's youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a
+sudden motion, loudly shouted, “Sister, the ice is closing in!” and she
+replied, chastely, “Then let us pray.” It was a superb tableau: the ice
+split, and the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop
+fell, and male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out to the
+rum-shop.
+
+Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out
+in him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+
+“Don't you think this is splendid?” said he.
+
+“Splendid,” Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+
+“Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?”
+
+“Humming,” said Lin.
+
+“Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?”
+
+“What, young fellow?”
+
+“Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff.”
+
+“I guess it must be.”
+
+“She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to
+do what she wanted him.”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that
+boat, and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends
+feel bad?”
+
+“I hardly expect they would,” replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+mindful of Billy, “except there wasn't nothin' else they could think
+of,” he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+
+“Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+off with a pole. Wouldn't you?”
+
+“Butted her like a ram,” exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+
+“Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+a-going to, an' he--I think he is a flubdub anyway.”
+
+“I'll bet he is!” said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+guardian.
+
+“I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his
+knees. An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them
+putting up any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an'
+I says, 'Dare you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing,
+an' I'd not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you
+pray much?”
+
+“No,” replied Lin, uneasily.
+
+“There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell.
+'You lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard
+the first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that
+mad! But I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents.”
+
+“Yu' must have felt like a millionaire.”
+
+“Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked
+by her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any
+time. Lemme see your pistol.”
+
+“You wait,” said Lin. “After this show is through I'll put it on you.”
+
+“Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?”
+
+“Lord! lots.”
+
+“Honest? Silver-tips?”
+
+“Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced.”
+
+“O-h! I never shot a bear.”
+
+“You'd ought to try it.”
+
+“I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to
+see you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?”
+ Billy had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+
+“You bet!” said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy.
+As with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he
+met--the few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite
+play for him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+
+“Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good.”
+
+Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. “Laramie!” said he, almost
+shouting it. “Yu'--yu'--is your name Lusk?”
+
+But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. “You're not going to take me
+home?” he piteously wailed.
+
+“Heaven and heavens!” murmured Lin McLean. “So you're her kid!”
+
+He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by
+a brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the
+boy, and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+that should restore the perished confidence. “Why did yu' lead him off?”
+ he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know;
+but as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and
+more sorrowful. “I just hate him to think that of me,” he reflected.
+The curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they
+should all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain
+Grant grew hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin
+sat saying to himself a number of contradictions. “He's nothing to
+me; what's any of them to me?” Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he
+restated the facts of the past. “Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before
+she'd ever laid eyes on me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never
+even my step-kid.” The past, however, brought no guidance. “Lord, what's
+the thing to do about this? If I had any home--This is a stinkin' world
+in some respects,” said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the
+chair beneath which the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband.
+They took it for emotion over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and
+their backs shook. Presently each turned, and saw the singular man with
+untamed, wide-open eyes glowering at the stage, and both backs shook
+again.
+
+Once more his hand was laid on Billy. “Say!” The boy glanced at him, and
+quickly away.
+
+“Look at me, and listen.”
+
+Billy swervingly obeyed.
+
+“I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+Are yu' listenin' good?”
+
+The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: “You've got no call
+to believe what I say to yu'--yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
+So I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I
+saw yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw
+all I want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If
+yu' happen to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come
+around to Smith's Palace--that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?--and if
+yu' don't come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night
+I'm liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
+to yourself. I've appreciated your company.”
+
+Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds
+in it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. “It's a lost
+boy--a runaway,” he told the clerk. “He'll not be extra clean, I expect,
+if he does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut
+out to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe.”
+
+The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+
+“Hello!” said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+Pike's Peak.
+
+Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention,
+came stepping along. “I'm not a-going back to Laramie,” he stated,
+warningly.
+
+“I wouldn't,” said Lin. “It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner--I'm dead sleepy.”
+
+“O-h!” Billy stood blank. “I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+lemme black your boots in the morning?”
+
+“Not sure my train don't go too early.”
+
+“I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em.”
+
+“Where do yu' sleep?”
+
+“Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me
+to-night?”
+
+“Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs.”
+
+But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first
+to hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the
+belt round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders
+outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+
+“Did it ever kill a man?” asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+
+“No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+killin' me.”
+
+“Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen.” He brought out
+the relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. “I foun' it myself,
+camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?”
+
+Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+
+“Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's.”
+
+“Who's Kelley?”
+
+“He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's
+how she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran
+then. An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her
+spell--an' father can't stop her, an' I--ah, I was sick of it! She's
+lamed me up twice beating me--an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless
+my mother!' a-getting up and a-going to bed--he's a flubdub! An' so I
+cleared out. But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father--an'
+you. I'll do it now if you say it's any sense.”
+
+Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. “Don't yu' do it now,” said he.
+
+“You wouldn't like mother,” Billy continued. “You can keep that.” He
+came to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside
+him. “Do you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five
+kinds--sage-hen, an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more
+kinds harder--but I couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought
+the magpie's, though. D' you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you
+stay to-morrow an' I'll show you that en' some other things I got the
+engine-man lets me keep there, for there's boys that would steal an egg.
+An' I could take you where we could fire that pistol. Bet you don't know
+what that is!”
+
+He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were
+things that rattled.
+
+Mr. McLean gave it up.
+
+“That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with
+the engine-man.”
+
+Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience
+made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
+his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
+the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man
+held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion
+that Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
+suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
+was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The
+arms and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
+conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
+frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
+breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the
+long, curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the
+door of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and
+kissed Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a
+hangdog stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the
+sound sleep of health.
+
+He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering
+with his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
+slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
+he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
+filled with the bells and the sun of the winter's day. “Where have I
+struck now?” he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
+mind, he raised himself on his arm.
+
+There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+him.
+
+“You're awful late,” said Responsibility. “But I weren't a-going without
+telling you good-bye.”
+
+“Go?” exclaimed Lin. “Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+breakfast alone?” The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
+than he could do!
+
+“I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay--why, you said
+you was a-going by the early train!”
+
+“But the durned thing's got away on me,” said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+the bed.
+
+“If I hadn't a-promised them--”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with
+them.”
+
+“Shucks!”
+
+“We're a-going to have fun to-day.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just
+as leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
+here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?”
+
+“Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?” inquired the artful McLean.
+“That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes.”
+
+“Twenty minutes! If they'd wait--”
+
+“See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought
+to waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+engagements, yu' see--for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+treat a man that way now, could he?”
+
+“Course he couldn't,” said Billy, brightening.
+
+“And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas,
+that only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's
+Billy?' They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll
+explain to us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars.”
+
+The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy
+with a convincing eye.
+
+“That's so,” said Billy.
+
+“And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out
+of Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now,
+Bill, what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just
+you and me?”
+
+“I'd like that,” said Billy. “Is it all day?”
+
+“I was thinkin' of all day,” said Lin. “I'll not make yu' do anything
+yu'd rather not.”
+
+“Ah, they can smoke without me,” said Billy, with sudden acrimony. “I'll
+see 'em to-morro'.”
+
+“That's you!” cried Mr. McLean. “Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell
+them to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'.”
+
+The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
+tying his scarf with great care. “Wished I'd a clean shirt,” said he.
+“But I don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good
+move.” He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was
+particular to store them in his safest pocket. “I ain't sure whether
+you're crazy or not,” said he to the man in the looking-glass. “I ain't
+never been sure.” And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+
+He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+the bill of fare.
+
+“I'd like to see you often,” said he. “I'll come and see you if you
+don't live too far.”
+
+“That's the trouble,” said the cow-puncher. “I do. Awful far.” He stared
+out of the window.
+
+“Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+write?” “What's that? Can I write? Oh yes.”
+
+“I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney,
+Nebraska, an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake--that's the finest town
+except Denver.”
+
+Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to,
+yet goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable
+signs of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+the bill paid.
+
+The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from
+their peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over
+the city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells
+broke out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+
+“Don't you like music?” inquired Billy.
+
+“Yes,” said Lin.
+
+Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting,
+orderly yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of
+Christmas came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day,
+possessor of his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort
+of friendly challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+
+“Don't you think we could go in here?” Billy asked. A church door was
+open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. “They've good
+music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been
+in lots of times.”
+
+They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep
+in listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent
+imitation of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain
+especially reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time
+“Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,” pealed forth and ceased, both
+the delighted faces fell.
+
+“Don't you wish there was more?” Billy whispered.
+
+“Wish there was a hundred verses,” answered Lin.
+
+But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between
+them they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel.
+Lin's eyes roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their
+evergreen, the flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and
+gold. “'Peace, good-will towards men,'” he read. “That's so. Peace and
+good-will. Yes, that's so. I expect they got that somewheres in the
+Bible. It's awful good, and you'd never think of it yourself.”
+
+There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. “This is
+the hymn we have now,” she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the
+book together, dutifully reading the words:
+
+   “It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth--”
+
+This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it,
+until he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the
+concluding ones:
+
+   “And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing.”
+
+The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned
+his face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has
+reasons which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but
+when the service was over and he came out, he repeated again, “'Peace
+and good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if
+he'll preach on them words I'll be there.”
+
+“Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?” asked Billy.
+
+“Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?”
+
+“No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?”
+
+“The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses.
+Why, we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among
+the foothills.”
+
+To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+was walked off his young heels--a truth he learned complete in one
+horrid moment, and battled to conceal.
+
+“Lame!” he echoed, angrily. “I ain't.”
+
+“Shucks!” said Lin, after the next ten steps. “You are, and both feet.”
+
+“Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them.”
+
+Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden.
+“I'm played out myself,” he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
+lugubriously at Billy on a bed. “And I ain't fit to have charge of a
+hog.” He came and put his hand on the boy's head.
+
+“I'm not sick,” said the cripple. “I tell you I'm bully. You wait an'
+see me eat dinner.”
+
+But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+
+There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription
+and most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of
+vigil, while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed,
+better and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+
+“I couldn't work quick to-day,” he said. “But I guess one day won't lose
+me my trade.”
+
+“How d' yu' mean?” asked Lin.
+
+“Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has
+theirs, an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher
+an' lots, an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for
+nothing. I wished you lived in Denver.”
+
+“Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+any of the outfit.”
+
+“Why, I'm doing first-rate,” said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+which Mr. McLean now burst. “An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+at any other job.”
+
+“I want to see that engine-man,” muttered Lin. “I don't like your
+smokin' friend.”
+
+“Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?”
+
+“Smart's nothin',” observed Mr. McLean.
+
+“Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot,” pursued Billy, engagingly.
+
+“I'll bet he has!” growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+aback at his language.
+
+It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched
+and shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through
+a scene in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and
+forgiveness, and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. “Shucks!”
+ said he. “The kid would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him
+there, anyway.”
+
+Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular
+man, with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that
+week noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little
+boy walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed
+as happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a
+word, and his face was serious.
+
+Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+
+“Hello!” said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. “Have a
+good drunk?”
+
+“Changed my mind,” said Lin, grinning. “Proves I've got one. Struck
+Christmas all right, though.”
+
+“Who's your friend?” inquired his Excellency.
+
+“This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at
+Sunk Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow.”
+
+The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+plain.
+
+“Sufferin Moses!” remarked his Excellency.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+
+We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and
+jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were
+a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal
+lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of
+sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising
+into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our
+undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly,
+except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against
+Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and
+other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's
+blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized
+by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the
+distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+
+“They've caved!” he shouted.
+
+“Who?” I cried, thus awakened.
+
+“Ah, the fool company,” said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+“They've shed their haughtiness,” he added, confidingly, as if I must
+know all about it.
+
+“Where did they learn that wisdom?” I asked, not knowing in the least.
+
+“Experience,” he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+passed); “nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain.”
+
+He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
+more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
+waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
+haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
+so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the
+emotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed
+employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the
+railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I
+dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of
+the station, and, at once remarking, “They're going to leave us alone,”
+ sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where
+some cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail,
+and here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had
+got a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to
+appreciate the jests of these rollicking people. “Read it!” they said to
+me; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroad
+was going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would
+trust to Separ's good feeling. “Nothing more,” the letter ran, “will be
+done about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall
+pass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will
+prove our genuine desire to benefit that section.
+
+“'Initial outrage,'” quoted one of the agent' large playmates. “Ain't
+they furgivin'?”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+cow-catcher!”
+
+The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+
+“We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes,” he drawled judicially, “I'd be mad at
+that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why,
+your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant.” He took
+the paper from me, and read, sardonically: “'Subsequent vandalisms...
+wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the
+cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad
+'Policy of friendship... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!” And, shaking
+his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of
+the agent. “Tubercle,” said he (this was their name for the agent, who
+had told all of us about his lungs), “it ain't your fault we saw their
+fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't
+bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late
+over this joke.”
+
+Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had
+hit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive
+to frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its
+opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to
+think of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box
+painted “Hotel Brunswick”--“hotel” in small italics and “Brunswick” in
+enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+
+Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the
+line in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well
+known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant
+young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by
+her to see about supper and lodging.
+
+At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might
+ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals
+I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted
+and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several
+empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these
+freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by
+three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking
+through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But
+with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until
+five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door,
+where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the
+smell of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick
+to spend the remaining minutes in the air.
+
+“I was expecting you,” said the girl. “Well, if I haven't frightened
+him!” She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
+“Why,” she explained, “I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side
+are you going to butter your bread this evening?”
+
+“You had smelt it?” said I, still cloudy with surprise. “Yes.
+Unquestionably. Very rancid.” She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+fellowship in her tone, said, “I was going to warn you--” when suddenly,
+down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. “Oh, dear!” she
+cried, starting up. “There's trouble.”
+
+“Not trouble,” I assured her. “Too many are firing at once to be in
+earnest. And you would be safe here.”
+
+“Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we
+are respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
+yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home.”
+ The words “Louisville and Nashville” spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+
+“Unescorted all that way!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Isn't it awful?” said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
+the pistol she carried. “But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?” And she
+eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+
+“Why New York?” I demanded. “Guess again.”
+
+“Well,” she debated, “well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
+English!” she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+to herself, reprovingly, “If I'm not acting rude!”
+
+“Oh!” said I, rather familiarly.
+
+“It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so
+free with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and
+everything--I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking
+to--to folks around!” Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose
+before her, and her eyes grew distant.
+
+I wished to say, “Treat me as 'folks around,'” but this tall country
+girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not “folks around,”
+ she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+dark as to them.
+
+“Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,” she resumed, “and never as far
+as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow.”
+
+“You've got me all wrong,” said I. “I'm not English; I'm not New York.
+I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when
+you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!”
+
+“Did you ever!” said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
+most Americans. “And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
+since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit
+you, you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?”
+
+“I'd travel my money's length to meet her!” said I.
+
+A wave of pain crossed her face. “Nate didn't know,” she said then,
+lightly. “You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+writing.”
+
+Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+forgiven.
+
+“I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage,” continued the girl.
+
+“Then I'll have your company on a weary road,” said I; for my journey
+was now to that part of the cattle country.
+
+“To Buffalo?” she said, quickly. “Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is
+Nate Buckner.” She paused. “Then you're not acquainted with him?”
+
+“I may have seen him,” I answered, slowly. “But faces and names out here
+come and go.”
+
+I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been
+sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity
+of the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and
+daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart;
+but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely
+years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to
+tell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if
+the stage went soon after supper.
+
+“Now isn't that a bother?” said she, when I answered that it did not
+start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. “Never
+mind,” she continued, briskly; “I'm used to things. I'll just sit up
+somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure
+all that shooting's only jollification?”
+
+“Certain,” I said. “But I'll go and see.”
+
+“They always will have their fun,” said she. “But I hate to have a poor
+boy get hurt--even him deserving it!”
+
+“They use pistols instead of fire-crackers,” said I. “But you must never
+sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do.”
+
+“Why, you're real kind!” she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+wondering what I ought to do.
+
+Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a
+sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable
+of its name.
+
+Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail
+after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly
+during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point
+these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp
+Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American
+railway man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt,
+but needless; and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief,
+businesslike result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on
+a board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the
+fat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees
+before it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees.
+There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were
+a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where
+you might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times
+enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the
+little station--some seven shanties all told. Between them were spaces
+of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midst
+ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a great
+string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one end
+in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyond
+each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of
+sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the
+continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed
+many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande
+similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds
+hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous
+young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot
+them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
+
+And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of
+the agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey
+Wiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up
+to telegraph for some additional cars.
+
+“I'm dead on to you!” squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight
+of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought
+it was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the
+water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind
+the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some
+fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth
+to an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and
+comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
+habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
+inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
+reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
+Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
+in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
+wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?
+
+They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that
+about the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
+round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
+out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
+should be so tactless.
+
+“If we don't get him used to us,” observed the Virginian, “he and his
+pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man.”
+
+Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it.
+The news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater,
+and playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting
+with pistols round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs
+improved, and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did not
+understand. But the company discerned no humor whatever in having its
+water-tank perforated, which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies
+and other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ. Now what
+should authority do upon these free plains, this wilderness of
+do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the air was like inebriation? The
+large, headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and out
+again meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselves
+resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; and
+later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they had
+side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his death
+accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.
+They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them forever
+from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things must be
+endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrong
+the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon
+Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for
+example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in
+town.
+
+It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would
+be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner.
+To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail,
+made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to
+the corrals.
+
+A small, bold voice hailed me. “Hello, you!” it said; and here was
+Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a
+stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+
+“Thought you were at school,” said I.
+
+“Ah, school's quit,” returned Billy, and changed the subject. “Say,
+Lin's hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with
+the outfit.” And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+
+Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+reminded him of politics. “Wall Street,” he was explaining to the agent,
+“has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+along to Chicago. We want--” Here he noticed me and, dragging his
+gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+
+“Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,” I remarked.
+
+“Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted.”
+
+“Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean,” simpered the agent.
+
+Lin fixed his eye on the man. “And you don't know it now,” said he. Then
+he removed his eye. “Let's grub,” he added to me. My friend did not walk
+to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. “Billy
+is a good kid,” he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small
+mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a
+matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. “He's dead stuck on being a
+cow-puncher,” he presently said.
+
+“Some day--” I began.
+
+“He don't want to wait that long,” Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+“And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right.
+Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do
+the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,”
+ stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I
+know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. “But
+Billy,” Lin resumed, “has agreed to school again when it starts up in
+the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to.” Affection crept
+anew over the cow-puncher's face. “He can learn books with the quickest
+when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to have
+a regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesome
+him seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--but
+shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted.
+But when I found him the little calf could run and notice like
+everything!”
+
+“I should hate your contract, Lin,” said I. “Adopting's a touch-and-go
+business even when a man has a home.”
+
+“I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was
+mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that
+got him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and
+then, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him
+hunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him
+till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man
+foreman--and he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see.”
+
+“He's asking one hard enough,” said I, digressing.
+
+“Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--” said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open,
+hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at
+me again, he said: “Don't you get off any more truck about eldest son
+and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that I
+care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'd
+not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set
+on--well--he didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and
+I'm going to make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him,
+if I can. Now you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?” His forehead was moist
+over getting the thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+
+“And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?” said I.
+
+He laughed shortly. “She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here”
+ (Lin laid his hand on my shoulder), “if you can't expect a good time
+for yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason,
+can't yu'?”
+
+I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+
+“Oh yes,” he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his
+hand off my shoulder); “I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met
+last. I guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself--Why,
+there's a girl!”
+
+“That there is!” said I. “And certainly the world owes her a better--”
+
+“She's a fine-looker,” interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered “Supper!” with a
+shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+
+“Come!” said Lin, “let's hurry!”
+
+But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+sister's devoted journey.
+
+“Nate Buckner!” he exclaimed. “Him with a decent sister!”
+
+“It's the other way round,” said I. “Her with him for a brother!”
+
+“He goes to the penitentiary this week,” said Lin. “He had no more cash
+to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his
+sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved
+time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?”
+
+“I've not told her.”
+
+“Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's not
+right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+gently.”
+
+“Death's different,” said I.
+
+“Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a
+shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd
+been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a
+skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick
+as the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be
+down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that
+crowd around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that.
+If you don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself.” And Mr.
+McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+
+The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself
+at a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had
+veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye
+attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long
+weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he
+was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted
+proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it
+tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was
+going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding
+and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that
+springs from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the
+native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's
+uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted
+uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss
+Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean,
+knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a
+lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all
+in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's
+eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:
+
+“Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance.”
+
+“If it's too rich for you,” croaked the enraged proprietor, “use
+axle-dope.”
+
+The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve
+the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin,
+to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying,
+in his Texas idiom,
+
+“Have butter.”
+
+He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on “butter” cracked an
+octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+shake her head at the plate.
+
+Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. “She wouldn't choose for
+none,” he said to the youth, with appalling calm. “Thank yu' most to
+death.”
+
+“I guess,” fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, “it would go slicker
+rubbed outside than swallered.”
+
+At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+
+“You don't seem to know anything,” observed Mr. McLean. “What toy-shop
+did you escape from?”
+
+“Wind him up! Wind him up!” said the proprietor, sticking his head in
+from the kitchen.
+
+“Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?” screamed the boy, furiously.
+“Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!”
+ And he flounced out with his young boots.
+
+All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+
+“Who's hiring him?”
+
+“The C. Y. outfit,” said another.
+
+“Half-circle L.,” a third corrected.
+
+“I seen one like him onced,” said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+his chair. “Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!”
+ And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also
+silently dispersed.
+
+Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+the lady.
+
+Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+ceremony, when she began at once, “You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+have my laugh.”
+
+“That's all right, m'm,” said he; “don't mention it.”
+
+“For that boy, you know--”
+
+“I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him.”
+
+“Now, please don't! Why--why--you were every bit as bad!” Miss Buckner
+pealed out, joyously. “It was the two of you. Oh dear!”
+
+Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. “I had no--I didn't go to--”
+
+“Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well,
+and--I know I ought to behave better!”
+
+“No, yu' oughtn't!” said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+deprecation, “You'll think us plumb ignorant.”
+
+“You know enough to be kind to folks,” said she.
+
+“We'd like to.”
+
+“It's the only thing makes the world go round!” she declared, with an
+emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she
+caught herself up, and said gayly to me, “And where's that house you
+were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?”
+
+“I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet,” said I.
+
+“Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me.”
+
+“We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ.”
+
+“Oh, I am no--tenderfoot, don't you call them?” She whipped out her
+pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+
+This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+behind it. “My!” he said, at length, almost in a whisper, “she's got the
+drop on me!”
+
+“I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours,” said Miss Buckner.
+“But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards.” And
+she handed it to him for inspection.
+
+He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. “My!”
+ he murmured again. “Why, shucks!” He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+unconscious thumb. “You hold it just as steady as I could,” he said with
+pride, and added, insinuatingly, “I could learn yu' the professional
+drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun.”
+
+“You'd not trade, though,” said she, “for all your flattery.”
+
+“Will yu' trade?” pounced Lin. “Won't yu'?”
+
+“Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like
+me ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?”
+
+“She knows the brands, too!” cried Lin, in ecstasy. “See here,” he
+remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, “we're losing time
+right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+lady, and I'll bring her along.”
+
+I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
+office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held
+the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing,
+and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to
+the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a
+cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs,
+and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so
+I helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurried
+ourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went
+out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away
+skulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of the
+somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.
+
+As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and
+on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, “Did he know?”
+
+Lin hesitated.
+
+“You did know!” she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, “I reckon you don't
+like to have to tell folks bad news.”
+
+It was I that now hesitated.
+
+“Not to a strange girl, anyway!” said she. “Well, now I have good news
+to tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you
+knew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things
+can't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about
+this world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left
+home five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's
+grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize
+bad companions when they came around. See that!” She showed me a paper,
+taking it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a
+pardon signed by Governor Barker. “And the Governor has let me carry
+it to Nate myself. He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The
+Governor was real kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must
+have a mustache by now?” said she to Lin.
+
+“Yes,” Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, “he has got a
+mustache all right.”
+
+“He'll be glad to see you,” said I, for something to say.
+
+“Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?” she asked
+Lin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It
+was plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I
+was already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse
+to tell her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+
+So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that
+“we” had before us, and that lay between her and Nate. “We would be
+four--herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy.” Was Billy the one at
+supper? Oh no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. “He's a kid I'm taking up
+the country,” Lin explained. “Ain't you most tuckered out?”
+
+“Oh, me!” she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+
+There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing
+Lin should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep
+in the agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back
+into the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness
+she had shown me before.
+
+“Come out!” she cried, laughing. “Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you
+ever so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--a
+cowboy!” And she glanced at Lin. “They're calling forty-seven,” she
+added to the agent.
+
+“That's me,” he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. “So you're
+one of us?”
+
+“I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ,” said I. “How in the world do
+you know that?”
+
+“I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them
+from his room.”
+
+“Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?” inquired the proud and smiling
+McLean.
+
+“Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+coming through on a special engine?”
+
+“Please don't say it out loud!” quavered the agent, as the machine
+clicked its news.
+
+“Yu' needn't be scared of a girl,” said Lin. “Another sheriff! So
+they're not quit bothering us yet.”
+
+However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a
+sheriff sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas,
+said to be at the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations
+beyond, and the engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here
+was no molesting of Separ's liberties.
+
+“All the same,” Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+corrals, “the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here,” he urged
+to the girl. But she would not. “Well, then, we must rustle some other
+private place for you. How's the section-house?”
+
+“Rank,” said the agent, “since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself.”
+
+“Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!” said I.
+
+“An empty?” she cried. “Is there a clean one?”
+
+“You've sure never done that?” Lin burst out.
+
+“So you're scandalized,” said she, punishing him instantly. “I reckon it
+does take a decent girl to shock you.” And while she stood laughing
+at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no
+offence. “Why, to be sure you didn't!” said she. “But I do enjoy you
+real thoroughly.”
+
+“Well, m'm,” protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to
+addressing her as “ma'am,” “we ain't used--”
+
+“Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant
+no offense,” she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+protector, “because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+about an empty. That will be rich--if I can have the door shut.”
+
+Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering “Shucks!”
+ while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: “Her name's Jessamine. She
+told me. Don't yu' like that name?” So I answered him, “Yes, very much,”
+ thinking that some larger flower--but still a flower--might have been
+more apt.
+
+“Nobody seems to have slept in these,” said she, stepping down; and on
+learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+“What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if
+you had a Louavull an' Nashvull car,” said she. “Twould seem like my old
+Kentucky home!” And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held
+the lamp up to read the car's lettering. “'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's
+a way-off stranger! I reckon they're all strange.” She went along the
+train with her lamp. “Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is
+rich! Nate will laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's
+a little nearer my country. What time does the stage start? Porter,
+please wake 'C., B. and Q.' at six, sharp,” said she to Lin.
+
+From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings--their
+doings--with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can
+ever happen again, I know; for it's all gone--settled, sobered, and
+gone. And whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup,
+how I thank my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in
+time for!
+
+To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a
+good shake-down--clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+not resist--what do you suppose?--a looking-glass for next morning!
+And we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to her,
+she said, in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by all
+means, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety better
+so; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began spreading
+straw and blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and long,
+and its tone rose in pitch as it came.
+
+“I'll get him to run right to the corrals,” said the agent, “so the
+sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them.”
+
+“That'll convince 'em he is,” said Lin. “Stop him here, or let him go
+through.”
+
+But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails
+of the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the
+headlight grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at
+the corrals chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the
+coming engine heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met
+and mixed with the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached
+together like a sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars,
+where I heard Lin ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could
+see the agent running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal
+with as much coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very short
+space for wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed
+suddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the
+place. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging
+against their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust
+coiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the
+glare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered
+around it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep
+breaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came
+out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising
+shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by
+the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so
+precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only
+look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the
+engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making
+boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor
+joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his pistol drawn, to
+keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on the lever, the
+fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and descended
+and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured
+eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his errand, when
+some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to get down
+and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he named the
+sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and the new
+yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations, they
+swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
+step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in
+this silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and
+they all looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there
+on the threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind
+her, and touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine
+Buckner.
+
+“Will you gentlemen do me a favor?” said she. “Strangers, maybe, have
+no right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For
+I'm real sleepy!” She smiled as she brought this out. “I've been four
+days and nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo.
+You see I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want
+boys to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till
+to-morrow night?”
+
+In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among
+them, and that some word was passing through their groups. After the
+brief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their
+horses, while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the
+sheriff and engineer remained as they were.
+
+“Good-night, lady,” said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the
+others kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed
+away to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern
+chaps, passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light
+in front of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and
+there a faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing
+column a bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the
+doorway, and then was gone again into the dimness.
+
+The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine
+moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an
+exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and,
+with all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely
+as the sheriff steamed by.
+
+“I ain't a-going to chase it,” said young Billy, struggling.
+
+“I've a mind to cowhide you,” said Lin.
+
+But Miss Buckner interposed. “Oh, well,” said she, “next time; if he
+does it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that
+way again if he lets you off?” she asked Billy.
+
+“No,” said Billy, looking at her with interest. “Father 'd have cowhided
+me anyway, I guess,” he added, meditatively.
+
+“Do you call him father?”
+
+“Ah, father's at Laramie,” said Billy, with disgust. “He'd not stop for
+your asking. Lin don't bother me much.”
+
+“You quit talking and step up there!” ordered his guardian. “Well, m'm,
+I guess yu' can sleep good now in there.”
+
+“If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.--”
+
+“I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin.”
+
+“I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a
+ride together. Pleasant dreams!”
+
+She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+it, remarking: “I like her. What makes her live in a car?”
+
+But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who
+took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One
+distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left
+our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off,
+when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his
+stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then
+leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in
+expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he
+slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas
+boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than
+keeping a watch on it. “So I gave him to understand,” said Lin, “that I
+had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that
+I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for
+his system.” After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the
+night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from
+Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join
+his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually
+good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown,
+unthanked young sentinel. “Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till
+they get their growth,” was his single observation.
+
+But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage
+I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note
+that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see
+him upon her return, to thank him.
+
+“Any Jack can walk around all night,” said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+
+“Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,” observed the young lady.
+
+This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that
+when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in
+at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the
+hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+
+But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside
+her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold
+her.
+
+Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look
+so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does
+not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man
+and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his
+watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she
+smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing
+swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.
+
+And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+
+“I know this road,” piped Billy, on the box
+
+“'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take
+a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.”
+
+So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+
+“Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.
+What made Lin marry mother when father was around?”
+
+The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
+that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met
+her on Bear Creek.
+
+The formidable nine-year-old pondered. “The geography says they used to
+have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman
+can have a lot of husbands?”
+
+“It don't especially depend on the place,” remarked the driver to me.
+
+“Because,” Billy went on, “Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd
+had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and
+I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too,
+only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert
+wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he
+come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and
+he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?”
+
+“No, Billy, you're not,” I said.
+
+“Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go.
+You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many
+are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen
+mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin
+ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if
+he does,” said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, “I'll quit him and
+skip.”
+
+“No danger, Bill,” said I.
+
+“How would the nice lady inside please you?” inquired the driver.
+
+“Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!” sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+“She's after her brother. She's all right, though,” he added,
+approvingly.
+
+At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now
+spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+
+Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding
+as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant
+war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his
+relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to
+the facts of his mother's life! “Though,” said the driver, an easygoing
+cynic, “folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this
+country!” But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next
+station carefully lifted him down and up. “I've knowed that woman, too,”
+ he whispered to me. “Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We
+laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think,” he mused,
+as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept
+sound between us, “there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out
+of that don't make soberness for somebody.”
+
+Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at
+our next change of horses “hoped” I would come inside, I knew she did
+not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+
+Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her
+eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks
+white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me
+that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold.
+I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart
+understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow
+puncher, standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully
+and spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre
+emotion; but the court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and,
+as plain as if he had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be
+stared at going up those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the
+joy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silent
+steps said, “Wasted! all wasted!”
+
+“Let us hope--” I began.
+
+“You're not a fool,” he broke in, roughly. “You don't hope anything.”
+
+“He'll start life elsewhere,” said I.
+
+“Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it
+into money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have
+just bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!” Lin brought
+up with a comical chuckle. “And she went to work, and he cleared out,
+and no more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given
+up tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows
+he's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and
+starts for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York,
+till she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had
+to go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the
+money he stole.” We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone
+into the quick little river. “She's awful strict in some ways. Thought
+Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday.
+Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is
+mostly sin. But her heart is a shield for Nate.”
+
+“Her face is as beautiful as her actions,” he added.
+
+“Well,” said I, “and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?”
+
+He whirled round and took both my shoulders. “Come walking!” he urged.
+“I must talk some.” So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+mountains. “I came awful near asking her in the stage,” said he.
+
+“Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!”
+
+“Time can't increase my feelings.”
+
+“Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?”
+
+“Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can
+be so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard.
+And everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending
+to speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and
+finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek
+better than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved.”
+
+“Then I'd like to ask--” I cried out.
+
+“Ask away!” he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+
+“When you--” but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of
+course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his
+substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he
+not married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I
+stopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.
+
+And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my
+mind.
+
+“No,” he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, “don't you ask about
+the things you're meaning.” Then his face grew radiant and rather
+stern. “Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some
+bygones can't ever be bygones? But if you,” he said, “never come to look
+away up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as
+if you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole
+business!”
+
+When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is
+not true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all
+plants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen
+misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the
+saddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the
+ordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility
+had been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have
+been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and
+this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. “Lin,” said
+I, “I will drink your health and luck.”
+
+“I'm healthy enough,” said he; and we came back to the main street and
+into the main saloon.
+
+“How d'ye, boys?” said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. “It's on me
+to-day,” he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was
+a little drunk. “I'm setting 'em up,” he continued. “Why? Why,
+because”--he looked around for appreciation--“because it's not every
+son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important,
+I want you to understand,” he pursued to the cold bystanders. “They'll
+have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder
+River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks
+he knows how to break a colt,” he shouted, looking around with the
+irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in
+laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. “You're not drinking, Lin,”
+ said he.
+
+“No,” said McLean, “I'm not.”
+
+“Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me.”
+
+“Yu' never gave water the chance,” retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+the place without my having drunk his health.
+
+It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+with the jail door scarce closed behind him. “Folks are not going to
+like that,” said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel.
+Yet the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle
+their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a
+Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working.
+All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her
+on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful
+cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and
+dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights;
+but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea,
+shaven clean, with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner
+to Jessamine were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean,
+so that I observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+
+“Oh, no jealousy!” said he. “But he comes in and kisses her, and
+he kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such
+oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I
+expect she must have some of her savings left.”
+
+It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her;
+and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that
+dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed
+some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to
+visit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he
+spoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of
+brother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held
+himself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then
+merely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of Nate
+Buckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sister
+was all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared
+criminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing
+loudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister sat
+close and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world to
+see. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back from
+some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemed
+more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.
+
+At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun
+draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream
+comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along
+the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that
+we saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of
+light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern
+masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and
+amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about
+the levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the
+brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I
+heard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had
+he been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and
+dashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment
+than he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a
+horse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. “Do you remember
+when I used to hold the pony for you to get on?” she said. “You always
+would scare me, Nate!” And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see
+that horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and
+she would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had been
+absent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin,
+where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was
+right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.
+
+“They don't know how to handle that horse,” said he. “I told you so.
+Give me a rope.”
+
+Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only
+was their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+been in the Buffalo saloon.
+
+“The trick is easy enough,” said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+liking an audience. “You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by
+the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit
+their fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!”
+
+He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when
+the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged
+swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its
+feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the
+saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely,
+and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise
+to silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden
+towards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until
+the head sank on the horse's rump.
+
+“Come away,” said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed
+and went, leaning on his arm.
+
+Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse
+had crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly
+unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in
+the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this
+world that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking
+him home, which his sister at first wished to do. “Why, I came here to
+bring him home,” she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in
+wax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and
+she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she
+saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was
+Lin gave her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence.
+He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about
+the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was
+said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from
+some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her
+tell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the
+same authority of that first “come away”; “Now you've had enough of
+the talking. Come for a walk.” Enough of the talking--as if it were
+a treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again
+obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and
+along the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only
+point did the cow-puncher consult me.
+
+“They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,” said he. “But
+she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and
+where she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at
+him to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.
+But I'd like to show you my idea before going further.”
+
+Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+sight of it.
+
+“That's all I wanted to know,” said he. “I'll fix the rest.”
+
+I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far
+as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour
+to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and
+sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate
+laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those
+walks.
+
+But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east,
+he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could
+not have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be
+debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did
+so. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to
+be made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning
+he and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined
+Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on
+Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.
+
+But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+
+Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful,
+serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom
+your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it
+froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+
+
+                           “Wensday four a. m.
+
+“DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You
+will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner
+of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss
+J. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor
+accommodations.
+
+                           “Yours &c.     L. McLEAN.”
+
+
+This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound)
+that this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give
+herself to a lover was distasteful to me.
+
+But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and
+she was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank
+surprise at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from
+her lips, at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as
+to her opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from
+them.
+
+“Let us talk straight,” said I. “Do you mean that Miss Buckner says
+that, or that you say it?”
+
+“Why, the poor thing says nothing!” exclaimed the lady. “It's like a man
+to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all
+just the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to
+know what I think of him next time we meet.”
+
+He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy
+in the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we
+did not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle
+or cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her
+loneliness had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+
+Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable
+roof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in
+the hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung
+to the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when
+I told her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked
+to the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one
+life-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the
+receding town and mountains. “It's awful to be leaving him!” she said.
+“Excuse me for acting so in front of you.” With the poignant emptiness
+overcoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in
+Illinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he
+must have gone with her.
+
+How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+come to him? But I said: “You know you don't think it was your fault.
+You know you would do the same again.” She listened to me, but her eyes
+had no interest in them. “He never knew pain,” I pursued, “and he died
+doing the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying
+himself, and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk
+religion, but I can't.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, “I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you
+for saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want
+it--to hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly.”
+
+During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the
+wounds of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no higher
+sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers.
+Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that
+was in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements
+brought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when
+at last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at
+the suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped
+out of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed
+and beamed.
+
+“So I went away without telling you goodbye!” he began, not wisely.
+“Mrs. Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!”
+
+The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. “Indeed? There was no special
+obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lin, crestfallen. “Yu' sure don't mean that?”
+
+She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. “No, neighbor, I don't
+mean it.”
+
+“Neighbor!” he exclaimed; and again, “Neighbor,” much pleased. “Now it
+would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing.”
+
+“It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you.”
+
+“Blamed if I understand her,” cried Lin. “Blamed if I do. But you're
+going to understand me sure quick!” He rushed inside the station, spoke
+sharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that
+had pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed
+near bursting. “I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter,
+and I expect I know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here.” He took
+it from the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. “You
+needn't to fear. Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!”
+ He watched it in her hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a
+Christmas parcel he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully
+untie. “Open it,” he urged again. “Keeping me waiting this way!”
+
+“What in the world does all this mean?” cried Jessamine, stopping short
+at the first sentence.
+
+“Read,” said Lin.
+
+“You've done this!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Read, read!”
+
+So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss
+Buckner might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she
+was willing to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her
+way east, and talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more
+than she had been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she
+could continue east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent
+believed the salary could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to
+find an order for a free ride to Edgeford.
+
+Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. “You did do this,” she
+repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+
+“Yes,” said he. “And I am plumb proud of it.”
+
+She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+stopped. “Did anybody ever!” she said.
+
+“We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“Oh no! oh no!” Jessamine declared. “Though how am I ever to thank you?”
+
+“By not argufying,” Lin answered.
+
+“Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+are crazy.”
+
+“I've been waiting to hear yu' say that,” said the complacent McLean.
+“I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an
+hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it.”
+
+“And I expect I'll go, too,” said the girl.
+
+“I'll be plumb proud to have yu',” the cow-puncher assented.
+
+“I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now,” said Jessamine, again
+laughing, sunny and defiant.
+
+“You bet you are!” said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into
+the station serenely. “You can't get used to new ideas in a minute,” he
+remarked to me. “I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,”
+ he broke out, impetuously, “I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When
+she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll
+you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just
+knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble
+inconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but
+how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some
+Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till
+that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after
+Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who
+talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival
+yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would
+find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in
+two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is
+goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in
+the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they
+all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after
+writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on
+that ride!” (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) “Got to Separ. Got
+the sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held up
+the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to
+the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in
+charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. But
+Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent.
+'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his two
+hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up and
+down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay right
+along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle and
+your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from Separ if yu'
+went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a man couldn't
+do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would be
+respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct the
+business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began to
+soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wise
+as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you deserve success after thinking of a thing like
+that! You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago.
+By eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent.”
+
+“Why, so she will!” said Lin, affecting surprise.
+
+He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination
+of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly
+failed to gratify her.
+
+Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, “I hope I shall
+see Mr. Donohoe.”
+
+“Texas?” said Lin. “I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet.”
+
+“He can walk round a freight-car all night,” said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+“I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me.”
+
+Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+
+“Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!” cried out
+Jessamine “Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why,
+Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can't
+remember!”
+
+“Shucks!” began Lin.
+
+But her laughter routed him. “Maybe you didn't notice you were young,”
+ she said. “But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe
+even the girls kind o' did!”
+
+“She's hard to beat, ain't she?” inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+
+In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found
+him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say
+good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and
+repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said
+the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the
+treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she
+made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+
+“Don't you ride any more cow-catchers,” she warned Billy Lusk, “or I'll
+have to come back and look after you.”
+
+“You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't,” shouted
+the long-memoried nine-year-old. “You will,” murmured Mr. McLean,
+oracularly.
+
+As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner
+cried “Jump!”
+
+“Too late,” said he, placidly. Then he called to me, “I'm hard to beat,
+too!” So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+intention all along.
+
+“Is that marriage again?” said Billy, anxiously. “He wouldn't tell me
+nothing.”
+
+“He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford,” said the agent. “Be
+back to-morrow.”
+
+“Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along,” Billy complained. And
+Separ laughed.
+
+But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep
+was unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town.
+Separ lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a
+while. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be
+sifted through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+
+That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+the Eastern States.
+
+“It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+to us,” said the Virginian.
+
+“We can't tell him good-bye,” said Honey Wiggin. “Separ'll be slow.”
+
+“We can give his successor a right hearty welcome,” the Virginian
+suggested.
+
+“That's you!” said Honey. “Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're
+the leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm.”
+
+“Yes,” drawled the Southerner, “that's what I'm aiming to do.”
+
+So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean.
+He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+casual.
+
+“Bring your new wife?” they inquired.
+
+“No; she preferred Kentucky,” Lin said.
+
+“Bring the old one?”
+
+“No; she preferred Laramie.”
+
+“Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl,” said the
+Virginian.
+
+“Sure!” said Mr. McLean. “I quit at Edgeford.”
+
+He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle
+had gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+
+But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from
+its lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, “You'll see her
+to-morrow if you go in with the outfit.” Then, looking round to
+make sure we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket,
+cherishingly, a little shining pistol. “Hers,” said he, simply.
+
+I looked at him.
+
+“We've exchanged,” he said.
+
+He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night
+when Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+
+“My idea,” he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. “See
+this, too.”
+
+I looked, and there was the word “Neighbor” engraved on it.
+
+“Her idea,” said he.
+
+“A good one!” I murmured.
+
+“It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+the superintendent's proposition.” Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. “She can beat that with mine!” he
+exclaimed, proud and tender. “She took four days deciding at Edgeford,
+and I learned her to hit the ace of clubs.” He showed me the cards they
+had practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in
+a book as if they were pressed flowers. “They won't get crumpled that
+way,” said he; and he further showed me a tintype. “She's got the other
+at Separ,” he finished.
+
+I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+Kentucky. “But how in the world,” I asked him, “did you persuade her to
+stop over at Edgeford at all?”
+
+“Yu' mustn't forget,” said the lover (and he blushed), “that I had her
+four hours alone on the train.”
+
+But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was
+a joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on.
+He suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change
+at Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+
+“We mostly take their tricks,” observed the Virginian.
+
+“Yes,” said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, “that's so, too.”
+
+Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of
+legend--more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and
+no serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and
+copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear
+like rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or
+in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and
+leaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door
+stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped
+in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped
+rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling
+up for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his
+grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: “Why, excuse me, ma'am!
+Good-morning.”
+
+There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place,
+and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging
+water-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+
+The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+removed its foolish hat.
+
+“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+
+“If you have any letters, ma'am,” said the Virginian, more inventive,
+“I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's.” He knew the judge's office
+was seventy miles from here.
+
+“Any for the C. Y.?” muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+
+It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+letters ever came for these names!
+
+There was no letter for any one present.
+
+“I'm sorry, truly,” said Jessamine behind the railing. “For you seemed
+real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand
+things yet.”
+
+“Yes, m'm.”
+
+“Good-day, m'm.”
+
+“Thank yu', m'm.”
+
+They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+
+“No, she don't understand things yet,” soliloquized the Virginian. “Oh
+dear, no.” He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. “You Lin McLean,” said
+he, in his gentle voice, “you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+mawnin'.”
+
+Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly
+and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I,
+and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+
+Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean “'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+for a six-shooter as ever I heard,” said he. “But she'll never have need
+of your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she
+hearkens to your courtin'.”
+
+That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. “Plumb strange,”
+ he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, “how a man
+will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.”
+
+“Your hair seems black as ever,” said I.
+
+“My hopes ain't so glossy any more,” he answered. “Lin has done better
+this second trip.”
+
+“Mrs. Lusk don't count,” said I.
+
+“I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky.” And the Virginian
+fell silent again.
+
+Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a
+good shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They
+would have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one
+or another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters,
+and brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin,
+more original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an
+ace of clubs. “I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a
+shootin'-match,” he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more
+objectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents of
+game--antelope, sage-chickens--but, shyness intervening, he left them
+outside the door, and entering, dressed in all the “Sunday” that he had,
+would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emerging
+from one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of his
+tormentors.
+
+“If she don't notice your clothes, Texas,” said the Virginian, “just
+mention them to her.”
+
+“Now yer've done offended her,” shrilled Manassas Donohoe. “She heard
+that.”
+
+“She'll hear you singin' sooprano,” said Honey Wiggin. “It's good this
+country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+corrupt your morals.”
+
+“You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man,” observed the
+Virginian. “Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass.”
+
+But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no
+one. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he
+had gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But
+more than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye
+to Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a
+wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. “She can have it,” he told me. “I like
+her.” Then he stole a look at his guardian. “If they get married and
+send me back to mother,” said he, “I'll run away sure.” So school and
+this old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky,
+who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his
+hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted
+chickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen
+at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them
+with equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.
+
+“This time right!” he exclaimed. “And I want her to know Billy some more
+before he goes to Bear Creek.”
+
+“Ah, Bear Creek!” said Billy, acidly. “Why can't I stay home?”
+
+“Home sounds kind o' slick,” said Lin to me. “Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral,
+and ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're
+good, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her
+about Laramie.”
+
+Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+angrily to the corral.
+
+Lin nudged me, laughing. “I can rile him every time about Laramie,” said
+he, affectionately. “I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store
+by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What
+do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--right
+after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says to
+me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about her
+brother and her sorrow.” Lin paused. “And about me. I can't never tell
+you--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all
+that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't
+anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was
+your son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she
+ever gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless
+her!”
+
+As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: “I
+didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!”
+
+“Well, well, kid,” said the cow-puncher, patting his head, “yu' needn't
+to, I guess.”
+
+But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention
+to the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we
+went over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots,
+a rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently
+on one.
+
+“Scanty room for company!” Jessamine said. “But we must make out this
+way--till we have another way.” She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face
+darkened. “Do you know,” she pursued to me, “with all those chickens Mr.
+McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here.”
+
+“Livin' or dead do you want 'em?” inquired Lin.
+
+“Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--”
+
+“Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!” And we all laughed
+together.
+
+“You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?” spoke Billy, suddenly,
+from his stool.
+
+“I'd like to see anybody try to make you?” exclaimed Jessamine. “Who
+says any such thing?”
+
+“Lin did,” said Billy.
+
+Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. “What a way to tease him!”
+ she said. “And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!”
+
+“I never thought,” said Lin the boisterous. “I wouldn't have.”
+
+“Come sit here, Billy,” said Jessamine. “Whenever he teases, you tell
+me, and we'll make him behave.”
+
+“Honest?” persisted Billy.
+
+“Shake hands on it,” said Jessamine.
+
+“Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?”
+
+“Honest! Honest!” And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+
+“Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either,” stated
+Billy, relieved.
+
+Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+
+“Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.”
+
+Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+
+“It's simple,” said the cow-puncher. “It's all right.”
+
+But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+
+“It's all right,” repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+looking down. “Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.”
+
+“Billy?” whispered Jessamine. “Then you--But his name is Lusk!”
+
+“Course it is,” said Billy. “Father and mother are living in Laramie.”
+
+“It's all straight,” said the cow-puncher. “I never saw her till three
+years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come
+easy to tell.”
+
+I rose. “Miss Buckner,” said I, “he will tell you. But he will not tell
+you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.
+It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.”
+
+But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on
+Lin, and her face remained white.
+
+I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets
+to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile
+I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith,
+ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could
+have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had
+it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with
+something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched
+the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow,
+seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of
+the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and
+near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window
+were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose
+the water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a
+Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I
+heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he
+walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.
+
+“She's a-crying,” said he.
+
+I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: “I'm
+sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.”
+
+“I don't believe she's mad,” I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the
+plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young
+Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he
+who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.
+But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened,
+and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him
+and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the
+door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
+
+“What?” I said at length.
+
+I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him
+gently. “Wake, son,” said he. “You and I must get to our camp now.”
+
+“Now?” said Billy. “Can't we wait till morning?”
+
+“No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+saddles on.” As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. “She is
+in there,” he said. “She's in there. So near.” He looked, and turned to
+the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on.
+“I understand her words,” he continued. “Her words, the meaning of them.
+But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she
+don't blame me!” he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+
+“Lin,” I answered, “she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.”
+
+“That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and
+she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I
+didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and
+she never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open,
+but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so
+long--and I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands;
+but she says I have a wife livin'.”
+
+“That is nonsense,” I declared.
+
+“Yu' mustn't say that,” said he. “She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+that she's honest, and loves me true--” His voice broke for a moment.
+“She said she'd wait.”
+
+“You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied,” I said. “But
+perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--”
+
+“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it
+in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and
+the chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and
+waked Billy to clear out and quit.”
+
+“What did you tell her?” I asked.
+
+“Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!”
+
+“Man, man!” said I, “go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll
+wait too--always!”
+
+“Would yu'?”
+
+“Look!” I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+
+I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its
+black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into
+the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in
+the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she
+was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole
+loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her
+would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while
+Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again
+and folded her in his arms.
+
+“Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!” she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+last good-bye.
+
+I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black,
+standing over Separ.
+
+
+
+
+
+DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to
+ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
+and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not
+guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine
+it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss
+Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never
+yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.
+Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.
+McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well,
+and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She
+was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable
+nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at
+Separ, and “yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'” Postscript. Talking
+of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send
+Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the
+ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She
+knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with
+the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to
+Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine
+wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy
+of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer
+to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve
+pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by
+Mr. McLean.
+
+“I can write a lot quicker than Lin,” said Billy, upon arriving. “He was
+fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling
+in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
+the cabin for my clothes.”
+
+“You don't say!” said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
+again.
+
+When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely
+at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.
+But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+
+Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. “Honey
+Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,” he remarked. “He says
+you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey
+says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times.”
+
+“Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,” said Jessamine, buoyantly.
+“And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till
+it clears, and then we'll go for our ride.”
+
+“Yes,” said Billy. “When does a man get too old to marry?”
+
+“I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.”
+
+“Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess
+he must be thirty.”
+
+“Old!” exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her
+table.
+
+“But Lin ain't been married very much,” pursued Billy. “Mother's the
+only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?”
+
+“It's better to,” said Jessamine.
+
+“Ah, I don't think so,” said Billy, with disparagement. “You ought to
+see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,”
+ said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. “Why won't you
+if he don't mind?”
+
+She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
+eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph
+called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to
+inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour
+teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was
+refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was
+still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.
+
+“Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you.” He was at the
+window, kicking the wall.
+
+“That's nine times since dinner,” she replied, with tireless good humor.
+“Now if you ask me twelve--”
+
+“You'll tell?” said the boy, swiftly.
+
+She broke into a laugh. “No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home.
+When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me
+three times.”
+
+“I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!”
+
+“Better save 'em up, though.”
+
+“What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty
+all over.” He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been
+tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the
+dust like a sea. “I wish the old train would come,” observed Billy,
+continuing to kick the wall. “I wish I was going somewheres.” Smoky,
+level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred
+unbroken miles. The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute
+the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above
+this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose
+bulging into the clear sun. The sand spirals would lick like flames
+along the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward. It was not shipping
+season. The freight-cars stood idle in a long line. No cattle huddled in
+the corrals. No strangers moved in town. No cow-ponies dozed in front of
+the saloon. Their riders were distant in ranch and camp. Human noise was
+extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place
+lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. “Why won't you tell me?” droned
+Billy. For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed
+away.
+
+“That's ten times,” said Jessamine, promptly.
+
+“Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+less glad now.”
+
+“Well,” said Jessamine, “there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+ask him?”
+
+Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+make a direct rejoinder. “I guess I'll go outside now,” said he, with a
+threat in his tone.
+
+She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one
+side of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+
+“And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the
+freight-cars,” he stated, more loudly.
+
+She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+restraint.
+
+“And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!” he shouted. “Just as
+if I was a baby.”
+
+“Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?”
+
+“All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me--”
+
+“Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to
+tell them?”
+
+“That's not a bit the same, because--because--because I treat 'em square
+and because it's not their business. But every time I ask anybody 'most
+anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and I'll be ten
+soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a mother I'm
+agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em, when they
+bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I had. Guess
+I will, too, and watch 'em step around.” For a moment his mind dwelt
+upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+
+“Goodness, Billy!” said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking.
+“The whole heel is scorched off.”
+
+He eyed the ruin with indifference. “Ah, that was last month when I
+and Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs.
+Chuck it away.”
+
+“And spoil the pair? No, indeed!”
+
+“Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped
+from home. Lin kind o' mends 'em.”
+
+“Does he?” said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+
+“Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+and things?”
+
+“Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd
+be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?”
+
+“Oh!” Billy pondered. “And so I said to Lin,” he continued, “why didn't
+he send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey
+Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the
+cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she
+chucked 'em like she always did father's and mine. I was with father,
+you know, when mother was married to Lin that time.” He paused again,
+while his thoughts and fears struggled. “But Lin says I needn't ever
+go back,” he went on, reasoning and confiding to her. “Lin don't like
+mother any more, I guess.” His pondering grew still deeper, and he
+looked at Jessamine for some while. Then his face wakened with a new
+theory. “Don't Lin like you any more?” he inquired.
+
+“Oh,” cried Jessamine, crimsoning, “yes! Why, he sent you to me!”
+
+“Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you
+any more.”
+
+“Why, I hope he loves me,” murmured Jessamine. “Always.”
+
+“Well, I hope so too,” said Billy, earnestly. “For I like you. When I
+seen him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed
+for you, I was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be
+awful. I wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things.
+Ah, pshaw! I wasn't going to stand that.” Billy now came close to
+Jessamine. “I do wish you would come and live with me and Lin,” said he.
+“Lin's awful nice.”
+
+“Don't I know it?” said Jessamine, tenderly.
+
+“Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him,” went on Billy.
+“And I seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you
+found out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing
+happens at all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?”
+
+Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was
+not going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever
+things she had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+
+Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train,
+and the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties
+behind the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the
+window to watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed
+out from the yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then
+with steam and humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long
+dust-choked train emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted.
+There was no one to go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The
+conductor looked in on business, but she had no telegraphic orders
+for him. The express agent jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He
+received his daily smile and nod of friendly discouragement. Then the
+light bundle of mail was flung inside the door. Separ had no mail to
+go out. As she was picking up the letters young Billy passed her like a
+shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had descended from the train, a man
+and a large woman. His clothes were loose and careless upon him. He held
+valises, and stood uncertainly looking about him in the storm. Her
+firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her hat was a large, handsome
+feather. Along between the several cars brakemen leaned out, watched
+her, and grinned to each other. But her big, hard-shining blue eyes were
+fixed curiously upon the station where Jessamine was.
+
+“It's all night we may be here, is it?” she said to the man, harshly.
+
+“How am I to help that?” he retorted.
+
+“I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek.”
+
+She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+
+“Good-evening,” he said. “Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here.”
+
+“For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+pole-wagon at Drybone.”
+
+This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out
+and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because
+Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+
+“Governor Barker has not been around here?” he said.
+
+“Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip.”
+
+“I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?”
+
+“I reckon so, sir.” Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself
+out. Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was
+mostly achieved thus, in amity.
+
+On the platform the man found his wife again.
+
+“Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's,” she said. “And we'll eat as we
+travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her.” She made a gesture
+toward the station.
+
+“Why--why--what do you want with her. Don't you know who she is?”
+
+“It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+of her talks to the likes of me.”
+
+He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+
+“Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it
+was you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this
+country to have a look at my old friends--and” (she laughed loudly and
+nodded at the station) “my old friends' new friends!”
+
+Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+
+Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned
+to her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and
+heard a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the
+large woman with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the
+stranger spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was
+something of threat in the strong animal countenance, something of
+laughter ready to break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been
+in the face, and now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag
+look of assertion that it was still all there. Many stranded travellers
+knocked at Jessamine's door, and now, as always, she offered the
+hospitalities of her neat abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman.
+As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and listened, the door blew shut
+with a crash.
+
+Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+father.
+
+“How you have grown!” the man was saying; and he smiled. “Come, shake
+hands. I did not think to see you here.”
+
+“Dare you to touch me!” Billy screamed. “No, I'll never come with you.
+Lin says I needn't to.”
+
+The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the
+wheel. “Lord, Lord!” he muttered.
+
+His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in
+his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were
+there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved
+together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered
+in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and
+golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the
+greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered
+the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel
+of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the
+trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the
+cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.
+Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,
+sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by
+his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney
+into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the
+afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher
+sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were
+not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of
+him--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with
+bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently
+he lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word “Neighbor”
+ engraved upon it.
+
+“I wonder,” said he, aloud, “if she keeps the rust off mine?” Then he
+lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word “Neighbor.”
+
+The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but
+no one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little
+distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for
+the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they
+came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat
+down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in
+silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with
+good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the
+eye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now,
+upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled
+upon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to
+everything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead
+noise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung
+low. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into
+his face and went away.
+
+“Good-evening,” said he, clearing his throat. “We heard you was in
+cow-camp.”
+
+The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change
+crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs
+out as he sat.
+
+“You look natural,” said the woman, familiarly.
+
+“Seem to be fixed nice here,” continued the man. “Hadn't heard of it.
+Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.”
+
+“Your wheel wants greasing,” said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+
+“Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.”
+
+“Stay to supper,” said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+
+“Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.” He twitched
+the reins.
+
+McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. “Better
+stay to supper,” he suggested, very distinctly.
+
+“It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before
+he--”
+
+The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. “Better
+stay to supper,” drawled McLean.
+
+The man looked up at his wife.
+
+“So yus need me!” she broke out. “Ain't got heart enough in yer
+played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.”
+
+The husband stepped to the ground. “I didn't suppose you'd want--”
+
+“Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.”
+
+Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her
+blue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+
+“No, yus ain't changed,” she said. “Same in your looks and same in your
+actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?”
+
+“I just wanted chickens for supper,” said he.
+
+Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. “I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.
+As for--” She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+“Neighbor.” “As for you,” she continued to Mr. Lusk, “don't you be
+standing dumb same as the horse.”
+
+“Better take him to the stable, Lusk,” said McLean.
+
+He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his
+room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his
+guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he
+was, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down
+in the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he
+made ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the
+setting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host
+looked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal was
+served, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back
+to him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced
+something. He saw that she had been examining “Neighbor,” and his face
+hardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated
+quietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down to
+their meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from one
+or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch and
+mentioned the hour.
+
+“Yu've not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+table.
+
+“I'm going,” asserted Lusk. “Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+interests to look after.”
+
+“Why, sure,” said Lin. “I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+me.”
+
+Lusk rose and looked at his wife. “It'll be ten now before we get to
+Drybone,” said he. And he went down to the stable.
+
+The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. “I know you seen
+me,” she said, without looking at him.
+
+“Saw you when?”
+
+“I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.” She sat twisting and
+pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+that he wished to reply.
+
+“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I'll tell you I
+know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not
+have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.”
+
+She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could
+have seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on
+his arms.
+
+“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another
+sudden laugh. “I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in this
+world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own
+good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!” Her voice
+grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly
+resumed: “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will
+travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she
+would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about
+you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their
+lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another
+wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him
+livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could
+not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no
+hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me
+a queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her
+face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin!
+Yu' never hit me yet.”
+
+“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Nor now. I'm not Lusk.”
+
+“Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.
+Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,
+'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!”
+
+“Yes,” breathed McLean.
+
+“She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office,
+but--”
+
+“I know,” the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+
+“It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+Jessamine Buckner?'”
+
+At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+flash.
+
+“And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She
+put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never
+speaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says
+she. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.
+
+“Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+
+“I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear
+Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right
+out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+
+“'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and
+hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to
+yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more
+that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.
+I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
+time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
+go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
+her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+
+“'I know,” she says, thoughtful-like.
+
+“And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+
+“'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that
+you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
+the kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
+hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
+like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
+best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a
+while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss
+Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,
+Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's
+walled up for a while.”
+
+“She could have told you it was a lie,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus
+wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second
+Best.'
+
+“Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+
+“And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+little “Neighbor,” which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after
+his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of
+mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'
+me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy
+thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell
+her about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to
+me till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the
+rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?
+You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, not
+mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right
+now--he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of
+his! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't
+touch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for
+you hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is
+different when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they
+ain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make
+yus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their
+nature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll
+be homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and
+found another girl.'
+
+“Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin'
+at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw
+him I would tell him to find a home.'”
+
+“Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing
+her?” asked the cow-puncher.
+
+Mrs. Lusk laughed. “Oh, you innocent!” said she.
+
+“She said if I came she would leave Separ,” muttered McLean, brooding.
+
+Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+
+“I have kept my promise,” Lin continued.
+
+“Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+Maybe she's gone.”
+
+“What's that?” said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. “I could
+be there by to-morrow night,” he murmured. Then his face softened. “She
+would never do such a thing!” he said, to himself.
+
+He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+beauty relighted the features.
+
+“You are the same, same Lin everyways,” she said. “A woman is too many
+for you still, Lin!” she whispered.
+
+At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+
+“Lin, I would not have treated you so.”
+
+The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+
+“You!” he said. “At least I've had plenty of education in you.”
+
+“Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+
+“I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in
+you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come
+to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and
+you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so
+comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon.
+Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?”
+
+“I can't hardly say,” said the cow-puncher. “Only noticing him so
+turruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking.”
+
+“You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were
+good times.”
+
+“Which times?”
+
+“You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.”
+
+“I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?”
+
+“Yus never loved me!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Shucks!”
+
+“Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+did. Only say it was once that way.” And as he sat, she came and put her
+arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+after him and smiling.
+
+McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his
+hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.
+Then he continued on his way. “Lusk!” he called, presently, and in a few
+steps more, “Lusk!” Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the
+husband he began, with quiet evenness, “Your wife wants to know--” But
+he stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The
+door was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the
+road went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars
+were faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks
+as they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the
+trees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by
+sounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses
+fed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it
+again. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone
+there. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of
+the corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the
+roof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the
+vine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle
+of the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But
+he ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the
+corral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men's
+saddles--from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with
+the horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she
+had sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look
+in at the door.
+
+“Lusk has gone,” said he. “I don't know what he expected you would do,
+or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.”
+
+She looked at him with her dumb stare. “Gone?” she said.
+
+“Get up and ride,” said McLean. “You are going to Drybone.”
+
+“Drybone?” she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+
+He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table
+clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she
+followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small
+bundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse
+beside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his
+cabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and
+be at home.
+
+She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed.
+“It's about his size,” she murmured.
+
+Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--this
+they had often done together in former years--and so they took their way
+down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first
+two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to
+a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
+and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+
+“I will ask you one thing,” said Lin, after ten miles.
+
+The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+
+“Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might be
+going away from Separ?”
+
+“How do I know what you understood?”
+
+“I thought you said--”
+
+“Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.” Her laugh rang out, loud and
+forlorn--one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have
+sounded far across the sage-brush. “You men are rich,” she said.
+
+They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over
+the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and
+presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they
+made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+
+“Put your carbine down,” said McLean to Lusk. “It's not robbers. It's
+your wife I'm bringing you.” He spoke very quietly.
+
+The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher “Get in, then,” he said
+to his wife.
+
+“Town's not far now,” said Lin. “Maybe you would prefer riding the
+balance of the way?”
+
+“I'd--” But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame
+her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+
+From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the
+road slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the
+immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the
+whole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged
+from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom
+it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of
+sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to
+breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through
+the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone
+bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank
+showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over
+the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's
+chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
+wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They
+passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings
+and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the
+sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.
+The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
+their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
+known.
+
+“There's a dance to-night,” said the wife to the husband. “Hurry.”
+
+He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+
+“I'm telling you to hurry,” she repeated. “My new dress is in that
+wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than
+you.”
+
+She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
+the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat
+and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen
+voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
+he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher
+was still less to his mind.
+
+“It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,” mused Lin, as he rode
+slowly along. “He don't care for himself any more.”
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day
+its hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants
+were rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male
+and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
+bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
+childhood which had set in.
+
+Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and
+foot, and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their
+captains upon its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of
+it. When the War Department ordered the captains to catch Indians,
+the wives bade them Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the
+captains to let the Indians go again, still they made the best of it.
+You must not waste Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many
+people in Washington and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians,
+armed with weapons sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was
+not entirely harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone
+graveyard. The pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it:
+“Sacred to the memory of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne,
+May 6, 1875.” Or it would be, “Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage
+Creek.” But even the financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve
+the Indian in Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands
+came treading with the next step of civilization into this huge domain,
+the soldiers were taken away. Some of them went West to fight more
+Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being
+done, they went East in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or
+their comrades wanted them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon
+the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which these soldiers left
+behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as were the
+tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
+empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
+cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
+sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as
+shall presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
+professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day;
+and the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead
+of guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and
+there was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old
+boots. Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow,
+ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces
+and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the
+doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for
+inside. Among the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for
+beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in
+the morning air.
+
+Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+scalping had disappeared. “Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885.” Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+“Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months.” This unique
+corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+
+But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
+tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
+enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
+wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
+than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
+sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
+to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
+said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
+poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
+directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
+coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
+to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
+boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
+new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
+by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
+be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
+tenant had answered.
+
+So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
+line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed
+over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
+coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
+in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally of
+Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a
+living. The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and
+instantly spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies
+full of youth and their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by
+twenties, by fifties, and out again next morning, penniless always and
+happy. And then the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each
+other till the innocents should come to town again.
+
+To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+post and corner--patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
+an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
+saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards
+at the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for
+their easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the
+fiddle at Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds
+there, the dance was being done regularly. “Regularly” meant that upon
+the conclusion of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and
+invited her to choose and it was also regular that the lady should
+choose. Beer and whiskey were the alternatives.
+
+Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see
+why his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so
+many gallant years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely
+cow-puncher sat mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+
+“Toothpick Kid is here,” said he, “and Limber Jim, and the Doughie.
+You'd think he'd stay away after the trouble he--I expect that pinto is
+Jerky Bill's.”
+
+“Go home!” said a hearty voice.
+
+McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+sombreness. “I'd forgot you'd be here,” said he. And he sprang to the
+ground. “It's fine to see you.”
+
+“Go home!” repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient
+friend's hand. “You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+
+“Yu' seem to be on hand yourself,” said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+jocular, if he could.
+
+“Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then--”
+
+“Doc,” interrupted Lin, “it's plumb fine to see yu'!” Again he shook
+hands.
+
+“Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I.” His Excellency the Hon.
+Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a
+grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ.
+Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer
+and different questions. But he knew what he knew. “Well, Drybone's the
+same old Drybone,” said he. “Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see
+how you walk nowadays.”
+
+Lin took a few steps.
+
+“Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.” And his Excellency beamed with
+professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the
+hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon
+he had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+
+“It shows, does it?” said Lin. “Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+I'm--when I'm--”
+
+“Down?” suggested his Excellency.
+
+“Yes, Doc. Down,” the cow-puncher confessed.
+
+Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+
+Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the
+Governor's good heart. “I've got some whiskey along on the trip--Eastern
+whiskey,” said he. “Come over to my room awhile.”
+
+“I used to sleep all night onced,” said McLean, as they went. “Then I
+come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts
+could make yu'--make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat,
+yu' know!” he stated, suddenly. “And I expect one or two in camp lately
+have not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.”
+
+Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+
+Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among
+the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard
+balls reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars
+and calm splendid dimness of the plain. “'Though every prospect pleases,
+and only man is vile,'” he quoted. “But don't tell the Republican party
+I said so.”
+
+“It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+didn't know!”
+
+And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and
+nodded his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should
+have done the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never
+remembered he was Governor at all with political friends here who
+had begged a word or two. He became just Dr. Barker again, the young
+hospital surgeon (the hospital that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again
+his patient----Lin, the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless,
+engaging, disobedient, his leg broken and his heart light, with no
+Jessamine or conscience to rob his salt of its savor. While he now told
+his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled away careless as ever, and the
+crack of the billiard balls sounded as of old.
+
+“Nobody has told you about this, I expect,” said the lover. He brought
+forth the little pistol, “Neighbor.” He did not hand it across to
+Barker, but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the
+doctor to see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was
+half hidden in the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but
+still stood and soon drew it back. “I take it around,” he said, “and
+when one of those stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she
+wants to get rid of me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when
+I'm off where it's handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I
+have to tell you what a fool I am.”
+
+“The whiskey's your side,” said Barker. “Go on.”
+
+“But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+
+“I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know--”
+
+A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered.
+“Not been to our dance, Governor?” said he.
+
+The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this
+evening he must forego the pleasure.
+
+“It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable,” said the
+coroner. “They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble
+in Drybone, but trouble comes to us--as everywhere.”
+
+“Shooting,” suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+
+“Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any
+in this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything.”
+
+“Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey,” remarked the Governor.
+
+The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health
+the matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead
+of sleeping on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next
+campaign. “Boys will be boys,” said he. “They ain't pulled any guns
+to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free
+to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's
+after you,” he mentioned incidentally to Lin. “He's fillin' up, and says
+he's after you.” McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness.
+He wished this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the
+whiskey. He filled himself a glass. “Governor, it has my compliments,”
+ said he. “Ambrosier. Honey-doo.”
+
+“Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering,” said Barker.
+
+“Good boys, good boys!” The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+“Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo.” He settled himself
+deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+
+McLean rose abruptly. “Good-night,” said he. “I'm going to Separ.”
+
+“Separ!” exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. “Oh, stay with us, stay
+with us.” He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+
+“You know how well I wish you,” said Barker to Lin. “I'll just see you
+start.”
+
+Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and
+walked toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead
+ruins loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen
+jockey cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and
+confusion were set up, and the tune broke off.
+
+“Just like old times!” said his Excellency. “Where's the dump-pile!” It
+was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to
+be screened from wandering bullets. “A man don't forget his habits,”
+ declared the Governor. “Makes me feel young again.”
+
+“Makes me feel old,” said McLean. “Hark!”
+
+“Sounds like my name,” said Barker. They listened. “Oh yes. Of course.
+That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+minute or so to finish their excitement.”
+
+“I didn't hear any shooting,” said McLean. “It's something, though.”
+
+As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and
+the murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices
+wandered outside, calling the doctor's name.
+
+“I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip,” said he. “But it's to be done, I
+suppose.”
+
+They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed
+and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist,
+to be ready when the music should resume. “What is it?” they asked. “Who
+is it?” And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to
+the caresses which the partners gave them.
+
+Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+after many dances and drinks.
+
+“Here's Doc!” cried an older one.
+
+“Here's Doc!” chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+since his day. And the throng caught up the words: “Here's Doc! here's
+Doc!”
+
+In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this
+flood. Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by
+those who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear
+unfinished--versions, contradictions, a score of facts. It had been
+wolf-poison. It had been “Rough on Rats.” It had been something in a
+bottle. There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker
+reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with
+wild inebriate gayety.
+
+“I must get her to her room, friends,” said he.
+
+“He must get her to her room,” went the word. “Leave Doc get her to her
+room.” And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+
+“Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'” shouted Mrs. Lusk.... “'Buffalo Girls,' you
+fiddler!”
+
+“We'll come back,” said Barker to her.
+
+“'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that
+bottle, Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!” She was holding the
+chair.
+
+“Help him!” said the crowd. “Help Doc.”
+
+They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of
+ribbons, fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+
+“She has six ounces of laudanum in her,” Barker told them at the top of
+his voice. “It won't wait all night.”
+
+“I'm a whirlwind!” said Mrs. Lusk. “That's my game! And you done your
+share,” she cried to the fiddler. “Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+Girls' once more!”
+
+She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling
+and ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some
+fiercely forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers,
+and she would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for
+her. But now she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin
+McLean. And when one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone
+to shoot him, she laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth.
+But even in the midst of the joke she asked again in the same voice
+where was Lin McLean. He came beside her among more jokes. He had kept
+himself near, and now at sight of him she reached out and held him.
+“Tell them to leave me go to sleep, Lin,” said she.
+
+Barker saw a chance. “Persuade her to come along,” said he to McLean.
+“Minutes are counting now.”
+
+“Oh, I'll come,” she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+still to Lin.
+
+The rest of the old friends nudged each other. “Back seats for us,” they
+said. “But we've had our turn in front ones.” Then, thinking they would
+be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering
+Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made
+its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and
+holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set
+her down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest
+gathered thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing.
+The notion to stay was plain on their faces.
+
+Barker surveyed them. “Give the doctor a show now, boys,” said he.
+“You've done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you,” he
+whispered to McLean.
+
+At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering
+of wind. “Don't crowd his elbows,” they began to say at once, and told
+each other to come away. “We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want
+to be shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty
+near absent.” The room thinned of them forthwith. “Fix her up good,
+Doc,” they said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the
+threshold and porch with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one
+or other stumbled on the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet.
+“You want to tame yourself,” was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye
+and Toothpick Kid came precipitately back. “Her cash,” they said. And
+leaving the notes and coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on
+the way back to the dance.
+
+“I want you,” repeated Barker to McLean.
+
+“Him!” cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. “Jessamine wants him about
+now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!” And she laughed her hard,
+rich laugh, looking from one to the other. “Not the two of yus can't
+save me,” she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+thickness sounded.
+
+“Walk her up and down,” said Barker. “Keep her moving. I'll look what
+I can find. Keep her moving brisk.” At once he was out of the door; and
+before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+across the quadrangle.
+
+“'Buffalo Girls!'” exclaimed the woman. “Old times! Old times!”
+
+“Come,” said McLean. “Walk.” And he took her.
+
+Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
+him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
+he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
+open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark.
+But presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned
+sullen.
+
+“Walk,” said McLean.
+
+“Do you think so?” said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
+with him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+
+“You're hurting me,” she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. “He's gone,
+Lin,” she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+
+She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+that he had set.
+
+“Leave me down. You hurt,” she pleaded, hanging on him.
+
+The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+
+“Just the floor,” she pleaded again. “Just one minute on the floor.
+He'll think you could not keep me lifted.”
+
+Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+had undertaken.
+
+“He's playing out!” she exclaimed. “You'll be played out soon.” She
+laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
+to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+“Jessamine!” she whispered to him. “Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion
+you, Lin.”
+
+“Talk sense,” said he.
+
+“It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll
+go; you can't--”
+
+“Walk, walk!” he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing
+his arms.
+
+“Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle--Ah, walk me to glory,
+then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for keeps.
+Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet--I'll bet she has never
+seen you look so. Let me--let me watch yus. Anyway, she knows I came
+first!”
+
+He grasped her savagely. “First! You and twenty of yu' don't--God!! what
+do I talk to her for?”
+
+“Because--because--I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off--but he had to
+sling--you can't--stop--”
+
+Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through
+deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. “Buffalo Girls!” he
+shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her
+as though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to
+wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load
+in his grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+
+Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. “So I've got
+you!” he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came
+up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+
+“Thank God!” said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged
+and encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him,
+threatened him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left
+him suddenly and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him
+here. He glanced at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men.
+The husband's brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who
+himself could not rise. Barker pulled them apart.
+
+“Lin, boy, you're not hurt?” he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+
+“You're not hurt?” repeated Barker.
+
+“No,” answered the cow-puncher, slowly. “I guess not.” He looked about
+the room and at the door. “I got interrupted,” he said.
+
+“You'll be all right soon,” said Barker.
+
+“Nobody cares for me!” cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+weeping.
+
+“Get up,” ordered Barker, sternly.
+
+“Don't accuse me, Governor,” screamed Lusk. “I'm innocent.” And he rose.
+
+Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. “I'll not say there
+was much chance for her,” he said. “But any she had is gone through you.
+She'll die.”
+
+“Nobody cares for me!” repeated the man. “He has learned my boy to scorn
+me.” He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+room.
+
+“Stay sitting,” said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+
+But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+sank as he had been. “I guess I don't amount to much,” said he. “I feel
+like I was nothing.”
+
+“Well, I'm something,” said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+breath. “And I know what she weighs.” He stared admiringly through his
+spectacles at the seated man.
+
+The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+Barker's face. “Doc,” said he, “ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+this way?”
+
+His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+
+“I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?” pursued McLean,
+wistfully.
+
+“You six-foot infant!” said Barker. “Look at your hand.”
+
+Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
+raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
+had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
+his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
+bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
+not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
+
+“She is strong,” he said. “Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+yet, maybe. Queer world!” he moralized. “People half killing themselves
+to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!”
+
+McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+him. “I would not want,” he said, with hesitating utterance--“I'd
+not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do
+to-night.”
+
+Barker touched him on the arm. “If there had been another man I could
+trust--”
+
+“Trust!” broke in the cow-puncher. “Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu'
+ever done me. I know I am a man now--if my nerve ain't gone.”
+
+“I've known you were a man since I knew you!” said the hearty Governor.
+And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. “As for your
+nerve, I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after”--he glanced at
+the bed--“and tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the
+nerve--”
+
+“Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'--don't let's while
+she's--I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but--”
+
+At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+stammering to say. “What do you want, Judge?” he inquired, coldly.
+
+“I understand,” began Slaghammer to Barker--“I am informed--”
+
+“Speak quieter, Judge,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“I understand,” repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, “that
+there was a case for the coroner.”
+
+“You'll be notified,” put in McLean again. “Meanwhile you'll talk quiet
+in this room.”
+
+Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+
+“You are a little early, Judge,” said Barker, “but--”
+
+“But your ten dollars are safe,” said McLean.
+
+The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and
+he was desirous of a second term.
+
+“Under the apprehension that it had already occurred--the
+misapprehension--I took steps to impanel a jury,” said he, addressing
+both Barker and McLean. “They are--ah--waiting outside. Responsible men,
+Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few responsible men to-night,
+but I procured these at a little game where they were--ah--losing. You
+may go back, gentlemen,” said he, going to the door. “I will summon
+you in proper time.” He looked in the room again. “Is the husband not
+intending--”
+
+“That's enough, Judge,” said McLean. “There's too many here without
+adding him.”
+
+“Judge,” spoke a voice at the door, “ain't she ready yet?”
+
+“She is still passing away,” observed Slaghammer, piously.
+
+“Because I was thinking,” said the man--“I was just--You see, us jury is
+dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and--Judge,
+would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+if it's a sure thing?”
+
+“I see none, my friend,” said Slaghammer, benevolently, “since it must
+be.” He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+thirst.
+
+In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant
+to watch until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew
+documents from his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over
+them. In all precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late.
+The fiddle, the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls
+travelled clear and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently
+steps unsteadily drew near, and round the corner of the door a voice,
+plaintive and diffident, said, “Judge, ain't she most pretty near
+ready?”
+
+“Wake up, Judge!” said Barker. “Your jury has gone dry again.”
+
+The man appeared round the door--a handsome, dishevelled fellow--with
+hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a
+second voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his
+friends. Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once
+to napping. From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each
+arriving more unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his
+fee and no more messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in
+his chair. McLean and Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink
+ribbons, breathed and breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping
+and falling with light sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear
+itself away, and through the stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and
+expand.
+
+Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+also.
+
+“Judge,” said Barker, quietly, “you may call them now.” And with careful
+steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+
+For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. “Hind
+sight is a turruble clear way o' seein' things,” said he. “I think I'll
+take a walk.”
+
+“Go,” said Barker. “The jury only need me, and I'll join you.”
+
+But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay
+had been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had
+shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their
+brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and
+growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant
+beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and
+thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the
+wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received
+Barker's testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even
+while he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars
+came Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in
+their hopes and good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both.
+The night had gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be
+fine. It must be well with everybody.
+
+“You don't say!” they exclaimed, taken aback. “Too bad.”
+
+They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+thought paused for a moment. “Her gone!” they murmured. “Hard to get
+used to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?”
+
+“Mr. Lusk,” answered Slaghammer, “doubtless--”
+
+“Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the
+grass. She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill,
+Jerky Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse, and
+we'll be back.” The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and
+instantly were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+
+The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in
+the cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger
+until breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and
+joking; and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the
+level beyond the hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty,
+wandering shouts broke out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed
+at cans or prairie dogs or anything, cracked as they galloped at large.
+Their speeding, clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs, and,
+descending, merge in the dust their horses had raised. Yet all this was
+nothing in the vastness of the growing day.
+
+Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+strange.
+
+Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was
+a calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead.
+It was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+
+“It's a coffin, boys!” said one, shrewd at guessing.
+
+At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already
+were Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing
+up with their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and
+comment. Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And
+it amazed each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things
+with the others. “Dead!” each one began. “Her, does he say?”
+
+“Why, pshaw!”
+
+“Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!”
+
+Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. “Dead?
+Why, pshaw!”
+
+“Seems Doc couldn't swim her out.”
+
+“Couldn't swim her out?”
+
+“That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out.”
+
+“Well--there's one less of us.”
+
+“Sure! She was one of the boys.”
+
+“She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84.”
+
+“She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle.”
+
+“I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter.”
+
+“Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too.”
+
+“I knowed her at Laramie.”
+
+“Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne.”
+
+They laughed loudly at this.
+
+“That's a lonesome coffin,” said the Doughie. “That the best you could
+do?”
+
+“You'd say so!” said Toothpick Kid.
+
+“Choices are getting scarce up there,” said Chalkeye. “We looked the lot
+over.”
+
+They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on
+the hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+rattling between them. “Where's your hearse, Jerky?” asked Chalkeye.
+
+“Have her round in a minute,” said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+three or four others.
+
+“Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same,” repeated the Doughie. And they
+surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+
+“She did like fixin's,” said Limber Jim.
+
+“Fixin's!” said Toothpick Kid. “That's easy.”
+
+While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted
+coffin into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's
+store. Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These
+had been able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had
+stretched themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some
+with not even their hats taken off and some with their boots against
+the rough hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few
+waking, and so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs
+were unrolled and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the
+motionless sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards
+of this drab chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped
+upon the counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the
+coffin. While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse
+came tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an
+ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,
+concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they
+revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While
+some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies
+backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered
+by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted
+those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon
+her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and
+nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of
+the hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it
+might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other
+end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in
+some way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however,
+still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had
+done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could
+sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held
+the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They
+had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held
+them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this
+moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled
+around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last,
+with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and
+captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping
+men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone
+outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them,
+and the dray was piled.
+
+Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
+teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
+away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
+past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
+grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
+throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
+teeth.
+
+“Stay with it, Jim!” they shouted. “You're a king!”
+
+A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and
+nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from
+it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,
+he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
+horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
+Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
+skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
+dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
+the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
+coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
+fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
+of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
+drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the
+slow dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
+whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
+riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
+scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker
+and McLean, quietly waiting there, and began choosing among the open,
+weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken. Their
+figures went up and down the uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+
+“Here,” said the Doughie, “here's a good hole.”
+
+“Here's a deep one,” said another.
+
+“We've struck a well here,” said some more. “Put her in here.”
+
+The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one
+end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they
+pulled the ropes helplessly above.
+
+McLean spoke to Barker. “I'd like to stop this,” said he, “but a man
+might as well--”
+
+“Might as well stop a cloud-burst,” said Barker.
+
+“Yes, Doc. But it feels--it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+McLeans.” And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them
+and lifted the cow-boy out.
+
+“I think,” said Slaghammer, stepping forward, “this should proceed no
+further without some--perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay me?”'
+
+“They don't use that on funerals,” said the Doughie.
+
+“Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?” inquired the coroner.
+
+Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the
+hill in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so
+returned. But the book was beyond them. “Take it, you; you take it,”
+ each one said. False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages
+back and forth, until impatience conquered them. They left the book
+and lowered the coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly,
+decently, steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the
+bottom with was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid
+sand; and a little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the
+same moment. The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single
+jar, quietly smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One
+removed his hat, and then another, and then all. They stood eying each
+his neighbor, and shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley.
+Then they filled in the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near
+by, and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+
+“She was sure one of us,” said Chalkeye. “Let's give her the Lament.”
+
+And they followed his lead:
+
+
+   “Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   “Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong.”
+
+
+When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
+the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
+many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves
+had emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were
+gone--ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or
+heroes, as the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted
+quadrangle the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind
+shook the aces and kings in the grass.
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to
+mend, and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after
+that strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good
+man's heart without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands
+despatched it her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that
+visitor now, she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on
+her table. “Why did he go away so quickly?” she sighed. But when young
+Billy returned to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a
+match for him. He reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin
+McLean did not come back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she
+had threatened. She looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full
+of hope.
+
+“Billy, I'll tell you just why it is,” said she. “Lin thinks I'm not a
+real girl.”
+
+“A--ah,” drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+
+“Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl--”
+
+“A--ah,” went the boy, entirely angry. “Anybody can tell you're a girl.”
+ And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor did his
+dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+
+To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the
+boy, and the man came into town galloping.
+
+No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought
+to do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he
+held her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say “Forgive me! Oh, why
+have you been so long?” She took him back to the room where his picture
+was, and made him sit, and sat herself close. “What is it?” she asked
+him. For through the love she read something else in his serious face.
+So then he told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all
+that he had to tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him.
+“Dear, dear neighbor!” she said.
+
+As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+Billy burst open the door. “There!” he cried. “I knowed Lin knowed you
+were a girl!”
+
+Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin
+on Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the
+only care of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though
+singularly enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of
+Jessamine!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+
+      The black pines stand high up the hills,
+        The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+      While through the canyon's riven cleft
+        From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+      Serene above their paling shapes
+        One star hath wakened in the sky.
+      And here in the gray world below
+        Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+      Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+        And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+      Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+        Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+      Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+        Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+      But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+        And he goes singing might and main.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1385 ***
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Lin Mclean, by Owen Wister
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1385 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      LIN McLEAN
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Owen Wister
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      DEDICATION
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+      received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+      none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+      disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OWEN WISTER
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphia, 1897
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SEPAR'S VIGILANTE </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> <b>DESTINY AT DRYBONE</b> </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART"> PART I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART4"> PART IV </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IN THE AFTER-DAYS </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+      future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed upon
+      her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early one
+      morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the world.
+      He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher in camp.
+      But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more dollars a
+      month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more indispensable
+      person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning. Lin's brother
+      punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless, some shifting
+      their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day. The busy work
+      of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not yet come. It
+      was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the saddle, and
+      many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the ranch books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with some variety?&rdquo; muttered the boy in his blankets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted from
+      the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them, upward
+      into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into bright peaks,
+      and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the south. On their
+      western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green River, and so at
+      length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed forth from them,
+      descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A mere trout-brook it
+      was up there at the top of the divide, with easy riffles and
+      stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the mountains, it
+      was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course, impetuous between its
+      two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it wound away like a vast
+      green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and the yellow, vanishing
+      plains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Variety, you bet!&rdquo; young Lin repeated, aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made
+      his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped
+      blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always
+      more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from Bull
+      Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient shingle-stones, with
+      dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged his face and
+      energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair shining upon
+      his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark water, and
+      having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he returned
+      with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at breakfast to
+      the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bugged up to kill!&rdquo; exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He sure has not shaved again?&rdquo; another inquired, with concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got my opera-glasses on,&rdquo; answered a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache,&rdquo; said a fourth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My spring crop,&rdquo; remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, &ldquo;has
+      juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay which
+      wanders out of your face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+      ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Him Lin McLean at once addressed. &ldquo;I was wantin' to speak to you,&rdquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. &ldquo;I
+      understand you're tired of work,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you?&rdquo; asked the bewildered Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. &ldquo;Well, I have a way of
+      taking things in at a glance,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That's why I'm foreman, I expect.
+      So you've had enough work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My system's full of it,&rdquo; replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+      thinking, he added, &ldquo;And I'd like my time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's good we're not busy,&rdquo; said the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' I'd quit all the same?&rdquo; inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+      post before it gets hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and
+      the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country formed
+      the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured the herds
+      whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young cow-puncher
+      flung on his saddle and mounted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So-long!&rdquo; he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be
+      going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+      demonstrative by habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to stop long at Washakie?&rdquo; asked one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now,&rdquo; another mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there's a new girl,&rdquo; said a third, &ldquo;kiss her one for me, and tell her
+      I'm handsomer than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't a deceiver of women,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why you'll tell her,&rdquo; replied his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?&rdquo; asked the cook,
+      grieved to lose him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm after some variety,&rdquo; said the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!&rdquo;
+       shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+      company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?&rdquo; said the
+      foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought my tooth-brush,&rdquo; said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of his
+      flannel shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to Denver?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, maybe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take in San Francisco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds slick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made any plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gosh, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't want anything on your brain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' except my hat, I guess,&rdquo; said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the bastioned
+      gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward and up to
+      the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the deep valley
+      they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like bushes, its
+      cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the edge of this
+      upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther away from its
+      rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed together over it like a
+      closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple the great country which lay
+      sunk beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place,&rdquo; said Lin to the
+      foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. &ldquo;She's sure there,
+      though,&rdquo; he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew thoughtful.
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he then, abruptly, &ldquo;where's any joy in money that's comin'
+      till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o' spot-cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+      took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him. Thus
+      they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to Fort
+      Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+      young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away on
+      his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+      entertainment&mdash;a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+      waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to attend
+      the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending to some
+      visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to watch the ring
+      of painted naked savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. &ldquo;What's he quitting his
+      job for?&rdquo; he asked the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Same as most of 'em quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been satisfactory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with a
+      horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And worthless,&rdquo; suggested the post-trader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;not yet. He's headed that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been punching cattle long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+      Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+      broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most a
+      year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte Creek.
+      Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the fracture was
+      commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the hog-ranch across
+      the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker to tell you about
+      that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went up over on to
+      Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting outfit on Galena
+      Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested in some Dutchwoman up
+      there, but she had trouble&mdash;died, I think they said&mdash;and he came
+      down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to Mexico or Africa
+      next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you need him,&rdquo; said the post-trader, closing his ledger, &ldquo;you can
+      offer him five more a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll not hold him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+      I've got to see his room is fixed up for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bishop!&rdquo; said the foreman. &ldquo;I've heard him highly spoken of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's better than that; he's a man,&rdquo; stated the foreman&mdash;&ldquo;at least so
+      they tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+      agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a visit
+      from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+      wolf-dance this afternoon&mdash;red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+      Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+      was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was not
+      only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went to look at
+      him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal service this
+      Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers and their
+      families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the agency doctor,
+      the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three gamblers, the
+      waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was there because she
+      was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in blankets, with two
+      royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of squatting Indian children,
+      silent and marvelling; and, on the back bench, the commanding officer's
+      new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+      wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and pageant,
+      his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught resting upon
+      him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content with the
+      other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him and the
+      stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel and found
+      the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when a
+      cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+      three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left them
+      late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of the
+      Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among their
+      tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now, keeping
+      his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and while he
+      gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm to
+      encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+      first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief from
+      round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light breath
+      from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had caught and
+      carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought into church,
+      and with this seemed also to float the peace and great silence of the
+      plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one of the ladies at
+      the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it prolonged a few
+      closing chords while the bishop paused before his address, resting his
+      keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain suit of black with a
+      narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific Railroad, while it
+      had delivered him correctly at Green River, had despatched his robes
+      towards Cheyenne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+      off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck
+      and kissed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+      to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+      presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+      clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+      and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and she
+      looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely but
+      with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder brother
+      in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of music and
+      dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him watch the
+      bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading hymns
+      vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and the
+      wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
+      listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
+      that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
+      attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
+      with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
+      and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
+      Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
+      hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people dispersed
+      through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the cow-puncher rode
+      beside Sabina in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?&rdquo; inquired the lady, after a
+      hundred yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?&rdquo; asked Lin, absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed. What's them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too.&rdquo; Mr. McLean fell silent
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye,&rdquo; said
+      Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
+      with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only,&rdquo; protested Sabina, &ldquo;I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out and&mdash;well,
+      same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.
+      Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
+      sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed across
+      the many little running channels which lead water through that thirsty
+      soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind them the
+      post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled to a toy
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! but it's far to everywheres here,&rdquo; exclaimed Sabina, &ldquo;and it's little
+      you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the
+      talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Little Wind River Canyon,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;Feel like goin'
+      there, Miss Stone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do your folks eat supper?&rdquo; inquired Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?&rdquo;
+       Lin asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day,&rdquo; said
+      the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+      colonel's table,&rdquo; Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. &ldquo;That is,
+      if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I know. But
+      I'll do my best to stay with yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the teasingest man&mdash;&rdquo; said Miss Stone, pouting. &ldquo;I might have
+      knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+      out to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!&rdquo; and Sabina giggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+      the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something like them partridges used to,&rdquo; said Lin, musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partridges?&rdquo; inquired Sabina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
+      by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times,&rdquo; said Lin, his
+      wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+      looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+      and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+      advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect you used to dance a lot,&rdquo; remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?&rdquo; she inquired next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said Lin, waking for a moment; &ldquo;but I like your color best. A
+      girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I don't think so!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant to
+      perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+      pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+      and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
+      different from fresh. All around home it's blue&mdash;awful blue in July&mdash;around
+      Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've swam
+      there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston.&rdquo; He
+      snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
+      left him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stone was at a loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' East to-morrow&mdash;East, to Boston.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+      journey from the post that he intended to make&mdash;the farthest from the
+      post and her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got no folks,&rdquo; replied Lin, &ldquo;barring a brother. I expect he is
+      taking good care of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you correspond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+      nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+      It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin rose
+      and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she noticed
+      him step to his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I didn't know you were lame!&rdquo; cried she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;It don't cramp my style any.&rdquo; He had sprung on his
+      horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any measure
+      of his activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's how,&rdquo; said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. &ldquo;No,&rdquo;
+       Lin continued, &ldquo;Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
+      look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough
+      for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
+      now. Whoop ye!&rdquo; he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a
+      jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+      she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he took
+      the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found the
+      meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of fat
+      pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that inside
+      the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury clams. Of
+      Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found others to
+      take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles from the
+      railway, and men there were many and girls were few.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
+      knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up
+      beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get full, Lin,&rdquo; said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+      store.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My plans ain't settled that far yet,&rdquo; replied Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave it out of them,&rdquo; said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside the
+      stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+      Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+      ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+      flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+      springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid the
+      vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance Indians
+      trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small pony, or a
+      squaw and pappoose&mdash;a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding over
+      the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+      clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do yu' figure on comin' back?&rdquo; inquired the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;About a
+      month, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and during
+      this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any sense in
+      going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were? But Lin
+      remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom of a
+      little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided it was a
+      suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them to change
+      their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and unharness. Then
+      they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
+      rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the bishop proving
+      a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed through the
+      pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching Pacific Springs,
+      came down again into open country. That afternoon the stage put its
+      passengers down on the railroad platform at Green River; this was the
+      route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of frozen
+      passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was going west. His robes
+      had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
+      gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then
+      laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand how you swear sometimes,&rdquo; he said to Lin McLean; &ldquo;but I
+      can't, you see. Not even at this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye and good luck to you,&rdquo; continued the bishop, giving his hand to
+      Lin. &ldquo;And look here&mdash;don't you think you might leave that 'getting
+      full' out of your plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. &ldquo;I don't guess I can, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+      enough. Try that. You're man enough&mdash;and come and see me whenever
+      we're in the same place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
+      up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of
+      the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music
+      sounded through one of the many open doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonder if the professor's there yet?&rdquo; said Lin, and he went across the
+      railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into the
+      back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+      rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin did not
+      join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a dealer and
+      a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were painted
+      sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares. The
+      legend &ldquo;Jacks pay&rdquo; was also clearly painted. The player placed chips on
+      whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards (quite
+      fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton case made
+      with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of chips rose
+      high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was lessened by
+      one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had much better have
+      joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of the dealer met the eye
+      of the player. After that slight incident the player's chip pile began to
+      rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer made admiring comments on such a
+      run of luck. Then the player stopped, cashed in, and said good-night,
+      having nearly doubled the number of his gold pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five dollars' worth,&rdquo; said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+      chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings of
+      fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then, singularly
+      enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars behind the
+      game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll leave the train go without me,&rdquo; said Lin, buying five
+      dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+      removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+      briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised and
+      sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin lost&mdash;just
+      as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of eyes early in
+      the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+      huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+      seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+      all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was all
+      back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with his
+      hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his fingers
+      came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by this hour
+      must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm following it, you bet,&rdquo; he declared, kicking the rail. &ldquo;Not yet
+      though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+      Boston.&rdquo; He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+      man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked freight
+      cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. &ldquo;And I guess Boston'll have to
+      get along without me for a spell, too,&rdquo; continued Lin. &ldquo;A man don't want
+      to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin' with the
+      hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that hog chap's.
+      Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank, he'd say to
+      me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit o' clothes
+      and&mdash;no, sir, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly down
+      into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+      division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals, the
+      great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its locomotive
+      moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed steaming to its
+      place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted, heavily bumping and
+      parting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Lin!&rdquo; A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+      good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it.&rdquo; Honey
+      offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bruck my leg,&rdquo; corrected Lin, &ldquo;if that's what they meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect that's it,&rdquo; said Honey. &ldquo;You've had no other trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been boomin',&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+      friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wher're yu' bound?&rdquo; inquired Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That just suits me,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+      saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that wall
+      Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents freshly
+      through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from locomotive
+      to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion and slowly
+      rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and the bells of
+      the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose great dull-red
+      cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union Pacific locomotives
+      sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like ships at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between, as
+      their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding. Mutual
+      whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are yu' doing at present?&rdquo; Lin inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prospectin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy Lin.
+      To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk of his
+      friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He saw
+      himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down a bag
+      of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand him in
+      exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded over, and
+      heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue water that
+      twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk check. He had
+      his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country to him, his eye
+      fell casually upon a mile-post: &ldquo;Omaha, 876.&rdquo; He began to watch for them:&mdash;877,
+      878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are yu' laughin' about?&rdquo; asked Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wheels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't yu' hear 'em?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'. 'Variety,
+      variety.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; said Honey, with scorn. &ldquo;'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're no poet,&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+      over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+      immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+      certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+      this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+      explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+      naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of the
+      window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+      sulkily, &ldquo;Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on yu'
+      in Evanston?&rdquo; And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his friend
+      told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends, forgot
+      prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In
+      Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose, and came to
+      Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek. Here the
+      berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and the bears
+      in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually with the season,
+      making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors. It was now
+      August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making mud-pies for sixty days. But the
+      philosopher's stone was not in the wash at that placer, nor did Lin gather
+      gold-dust sufficient to cover the nail of his thumb. Then they heard of an
+      excitement at Obo, Nevada, and, hurrying to Obo, they made some more
+      mud-pies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, &ldquo;Lin,
+      wher're yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Lin always replied, &ldquo;East.&rdquo; This became a signal for drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+      the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights of
+      untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with falling
+      waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation presides
+      over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof of zinc,
+      fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The mean ash-dump
+      landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot of mange. No
+      portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry, unimportant ugliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting of
+      the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable. Now and
+      again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about and gaze
+      down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water. Passing each
+      busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned pair of overalls
+      the same label, &ldquo;Levi Strauss, No. 2,&rdquo; with a picture of two lusty horses
+      hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to split them
+      asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that too, and
+      when he considered all things he laughed to himself. Then, having
+      stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would return to his ditch. As
+      autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy gravel they were sunk in.
+      He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his boots, and hated Obo,
+      Nevada. But he held himself ready to say &ldquo;East&rdquo; whenever he saw Honey
+      coming along with the bottle. The cold weather put an end to this
+      adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow, through which the
+      sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the two friends drifted
+      southward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the dirt.
+      It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze. But this
+      part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than Nevada.
+      Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them found a
+      little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite froze one
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're seein' the country, anyway,&rdquo; said Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seein' hell,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;and there's more of it above ground than I
+      thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll we do?&rdquo; Honey inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have to walk for a job&mdash;a good-payin' job,&rdquo; responded the hopeful
+      cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+      apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the simpler
+      prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in Boston between the
+      ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this qualification, the
+      apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa, and liked him. Lin
+      made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of; and, as the mild weather
+      began, he materially increased the apothecary's business by persuading him
+      to send East for a soda-water fountain. The ladies of the town clustered
+      around this entertaining novelty, and while sipping vanilla and lemon
+      bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of the town discovered that whiskey
+      with soda and strawberry syrup was delicious, and produced just as
+      competent effects. A group of them were generally standing in the shop and
+      shaking dice to decide who should pay for the next, while Lin administered
+      to each glass the necessary ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a
+      little more steadily than had been its wont, and he divided with the
+      penniless Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+      won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+      South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the new
+      owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his feet, was
+      only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the dance-hall at the
+      edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next day but one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had white
+      eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you spoke
+      pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried to beat
+      your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what made him
+      so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and every
+      gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get up a
+      race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon opened a bank
+      account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a silver-inlaid
+      one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle richly stamped.
+      Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the drug-store and inquire,
+      &ldquo;Lin, wher're yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water fountain
+      with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season of fine sand
+      and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung heavily over
+      man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling with joy; the
+      little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and shrank to a
+      succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus bloomed
+      everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the sand. There
+      were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste very good; but if
+      you drank from the standing pools where the river had been, you repaired
+      to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of wandering players came
+      dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa, played a brass-band up and
+      down the street, and announced the powerful drama of &ldquo;East Lynne.&rdquo; Then
+      Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that lie between there and Chelsea,
+      and of the sea that must look so cool. He forgot them while following the
+      painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel; but, going to bed in the back part of
+      the drug-store, he remembered how he used to beat everybody swimming in
+      the salt water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin',&rdquo; he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+      inspected his bank account. &ldquo;I'm sure goin',&rdquo; he repeated, blowing the
+      light out, &ldquo;and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!&rdquo; for he had
+      often thought of the bishop's story. &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; he remarked once more in a
+      muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+      have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd pull out with yer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;only I can do business round Yuma and
+      westward with the pinto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+      places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and was in
+      his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through Denver to
+      Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for some months.
+      Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a buffalo coat
+      for his brother&mdash;something scarce to see in these days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frank'll have to get along without it,&rdquo; he observed, philosophically, and
+      took the next eastbound train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+      with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+      instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft, gray
+      hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not the
+      majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa, with
+      its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a little
+      more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are not
+      understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn at
+      Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of there was
+      east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important stopping-place.
+      In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and silence prevailed
+      throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston without change. Had not
+      home memories begun impetuously to flood his mind, he would have felt
+      himself conspicuous. Town clothes and conventions had their due value with
+      him. But just now the boy's single-hearted thoughts were far from any
+      surroundings, and he was murmuring to himself, &ldquo;To-morrow! tomorrow
+      night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin for
+      thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached the next day
+      one or two of them commented that he was the most attractive-looking man
+      they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness, and wide-open, jocular
+      eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly conscientious wild animal,
+      there was nothing remarkable about young Lin except stage effect. The
+      conductor had been annoyed to have such a passenger; but the cow-puncher
+      troubled no one, and was extremely silent. So evidently was he a piece of
+      the true frontier that curious and hopeful fellow-passengers, after
+      watching him with diversion, more than once took a seat next to him. He
+      met their chatty inquiries with monosyllables so few and so unprofitable
+      in their quiet politeness that the passengers soon gave him up. At
+      Springfield he sent a telegram to his brother at the great dry-goods
+      establishment that employed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung by
+      hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+      wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off and
+      his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long after,
+      Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods used to be
+      above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton. &ldquo;Faneuil's
+      next,&rdquo; he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten home-knowledge
+      shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated near said, &ldquo;Beg
+      pardon?&rdquo; but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious Lin, with his
+      forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed into sight, and
+      soon after they were running in the darkness between high walls; but the
+      cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be seen. When the porter
+      announced &ldquo;Boston,&rdquo; he started up and followed like a sheep in the general
+      exodus. Down on the platform he moved along with the slow crowd till some
+      one touched him, and, wheeling round, he seized both his brother's hands
+      and swore a good oath of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There they stood&mdash;the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+      knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce civilian,
+      who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted resemblance to
+      him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by; and one of the
+      ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and smiled gently to
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+      afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+      and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+      Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+      air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+      sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+      friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had risen with
+      his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the paying-tellers of
+      banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at the Parker House was
+      president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal the cow-puncher to these
+      shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would not stay very long. Of course
+      he was glad to see him again, and he would take him to dine at some
+      obscure place this first evening. But this was not Lin's plan. Frank must
+      dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank demurred, saying it was he that
+      should be host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;they charge up high for wines at Parker's.&rdquo; Then for the
+      twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're goin' to take your grub with me,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;That's all right, I
+      guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like as
+      if father was livin'&mdash;(his voice softened)&mdash;and here to see me
+      come home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+      expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+      I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can yu'
+      spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off with
+      steamed Duxbury clams.&rdquo; The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where the coin
+      made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, &ldquo;I suppose Swampscott's
+      there yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Frank. &ldquo;It's a dead little town, is Swampscott.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow,&rdquo; Lin pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's been pulled down since&mdash;I forget the year they improved
+      that block.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+      first and last home they had ever had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventy-nine is when it was,&rdquo; continued Frank. &ldquo;So you can save the
+      trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher in his
+      offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+      surveyed the younger's appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+      &ldquo;After to-morrow,&rdquo; said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, &ldquo;yu'
+      can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu' pretty
+      close, Frank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+      side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+      amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+      the stress became too great. &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;while you're running with
+      our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+      not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+      revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+      shoulder. &ldquo;You've made it plain,&rdquo; he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+      eyes down into Frank's. &ldquo;You've explained yourself fairly well. Run along
+      with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round and
+      causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these things
+      at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu' need to. I
+      guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu' see me around
+      on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable to close your jaw
+      up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that to your crowd than
+      you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got for a brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences had
+      occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked him on
+      his glumness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the bright,
+      hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the graveyard he saw
+      a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel, weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ain't nobody to do that for this one,&rdquo; thought the cow-puncher, and
+      looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at the
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief was
+      shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place goodbye.
+      So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless past. When
+      she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter from the
+      street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly lump of
+      flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in Swampscott. He
+      spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but her act of kneeling
+      he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some hours he hung about the
+      little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the salt water where he used to
+      swim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' don't belong any more, Lin,&rdquo; he miserably said at length, and took
+      his way to Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+      drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly gone,
+      and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep
+      hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for
+      Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his
+      good humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+      stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs of
+      approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization was
+      utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and, galloping
+      among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner took on that
+      alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As the stage took
+      him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty miles or so,
+      shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual tones, &ldquo;Hello,
+      Lin, where've you been at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+      of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+      was hearty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It took a week for my robes to catch up with me,&rdquo; he said, laughing.
+      Then, in a little while, &ldquo;How was the East?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First-rate,&rdquo; said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+      conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+      reverting&mdash;at any rate, just now&mdash;to their last talk at Green
+      River, and the advice he had then given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust your friends were all well?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess they was healthy enough,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect,&rdquo; Lin replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no
+      notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bishop,&rdquo; the cow-puncher said, &ldquo;how was that about that fellow you
+      told about that's in the Bible somewheres?&mdash;he come home to his
+      folks, and they&mdash;well there was his father saw him comin'&rdquo;&mdash;He
+      stopped, embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed them
+      in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just now, what
+      were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have yu' got a Bible?&rdquo; pursued Lin. &ldquo;For, excuse me, but I'd like yu' to
+      read that onced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+      clergyman was perplexed how to speak&mdash;or if indeed to speak at this
+      time at all&mdash;to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable
+      had gone so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his
+      eyes from the bishop's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long has that there been wrote?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was told about how long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bishop,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+      never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+      plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry, down
+      in black and white two thousand years ago, than&mdash;than if I'd seen a
+      man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the elder
+      brother is facts&mdash;dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+      put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, &ldquo;I
+      am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been finding
+      more facts in the Bible every day I have lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin meditated. &ldquo;I guess that could be,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes; after that yu've
+      been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till lately,
+      I guess that could be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+      things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+      Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was
+      delivering the fulness of his heart to. &ldquo;And come to think,&rdquo; he concluded,
+      &ldquo;it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them big cities,
+      where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No, sir! Yu' can
+      blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll not give yu'
+      any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a stock-yard. Nor it
+      wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country here&rdquo; (he waved his hand
+      towards the endless sage-brush), &ldquo;seein' it onced more, I know where my
+      home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else. Only I ain't got no father
+      watching for me to come up Wind River.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+      self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away from
+      Lin. Knowing his man&mdash;for had he not seen many of this kind in his
+      desert diocese?&mdash;he forbore to make any text from that last sentence
+      the cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should
+      now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would join
+      it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River country.
+      More business was over there, and better chances for a man to take up some
+      land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort Washakie, the
+      bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned several leaves
+      down, carefully avoiding any page that related of miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not read it through, you know,&rdquo; he said, smiling; &ldquo;just read
+      where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts. Goodbye&mdash;and
+      always come and see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards Wind
+      River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving dot went
+      over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the parade-ground,
+      thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly soul, he shook his
+      head sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news. Meeting
+      him to-day had been unforeseen&mdash;unforeseen and so pleasant that the
+      thing had never come into my head until just now, after both of us had
+      talked and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's approach
+      to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come precipitately
+      out of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm turruble pleased to see yu',&rdquo; he had said, immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's happened?&rdquo; said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he piteously explained: &ldquo;Why, I've been here all alone since
+      yesterday!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+      gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+      blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock to
+      him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, &ldquo;when a man expects
+      lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course. But
+      when he has figured on finding company&mdash;say&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off (and
+      vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)&mdash;&ldquo;when you're lucky enough to
+      catch yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to
+      yourself for hours.&mdash;You've not seen anything of Tommy?&rdquo; he pursued
+      with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+      sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over here
+      with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the week's mail
+      for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man to do but sit and
+      sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could have endured that,
+      but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and gone to Buffalo. It was
+      circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered the money there must be in
+      the circus business? Tommy had taken the outgoing letters early yesterday.
+      Nobody had kept him waiting. By all rules he should have been back again
+      last night. Maybe the stage was late reaching Powder River, and Tommy had
+      had to lay over for it. Well, that would justify him. Far more likely he
+      had gone to the circus himself and taken the mail with him. Tommy was no
+      type of man for postmaster. Except drawing the allowance his mother in the
+      East gave him first of every month, he had never shown punctuality that
+      Lin could remember. Never had any second thoughts, and awful few first
+      ones. Told bigger lies than a small man ought, also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has successes, though,&rdquo; said I, wickedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; went on Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+      she&rdquo;&mdash;Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive&mdash;&ldquo;why,
+      even that girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how
+      insignificant he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not
+      one of 'em retains interest in Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was glad to
+      see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of Pitchstone
+      Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad care of
+      himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft in general.
+      He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East by a route of
+      his own discovering&mdash;and from his account of that journey it had
+      proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the years of our
+      friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the body he had always
+      richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a season's absence and
+      spoke those invariable words which all old friends upon this earth use to
+      each other at meeting&mdash;&ldquo;You haven't changed, you haven't changed at
+      all!&rdquo;&mdash;I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's boy soul. And
+      so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the nature of Tommy
+      (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him and took an
+      intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I was than he,
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved, and
+      on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+      firewood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at those sorrowful toothpicks,&rdquo; said he: &ldquo;Tommy's work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+      pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+      and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+      appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse way
+      on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+      alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+      sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's good yu' come this forenoon,&rdquo; Lin said to me. &ldquo;I'd not have had the
+      heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+      sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened a
+      number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+      apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+      the stew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tommy'll be hot about these,&rdquo; said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs. &ldquo;He
+      don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods&mdash;pickled salmon and
+      truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+      he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+      clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he showed
+      me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he; 'too bad my
+      damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on me ever since
+      Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail. 'You swore too
+      heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may have travelled
+      half a mile by the time I'd found four nests.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly&mdash;and in Wyoming they were
+      always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and I
+      enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite established
+      in my own soul at that time&mdash;and perhaps that is the reason why it is
+      the only time I have ever known which I would live over again, those years
+      when people said, &ldquo;You are old enough to know better&rdquo;&mdash;and one didn't
+      care!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+      cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of&mdash;&rdquo; I began, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of digestion.
+      I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it occurred to
+      me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before this, had he
+      known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the most important event that can happen in this country?&rdquo; said
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his back,
+      dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one limp,
+      open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what you consider the most important event that can happen
+      in this country,&rdquo; said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+      clearness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth that
+      I recognized to be meant for the word &ldquo;War.&rdquo; Then he rolled over so that
+      his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean country in the sense of United States,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I mean this
+      country here, and Bear Creek, and&mdash;well, the ranches southward for
+      fifty miles, say. Important to this section.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Yu' might leave a
+      man rest till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want your opinion,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Seems like yu' merely figure
+      on givin' me yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Very well, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+      perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for some
+      minutes now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect a railroad would be more important,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean,
+      persuasively, from the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than a rise in steers?&rdquo; said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. &ldquo;Oh yes.
+      Yes, a railroad certainly would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's got to be money, anyhow,&rdquo; stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. &ldquo;Money in
+      some shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How little you understand the real wants of the country!&rdquo; said I, coming
+      to the point. &ldquo;It's a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; I repeated. &ldquo;A new girl coming to this starved country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;yu' caught me&mdash;if that's much to do when a man is
+      half-witted with dinner and sleep.&rdquo; He closed his eyes again and lay with
+      a specious expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a
+      solitary entertainment, and palls. &ldquo;Starved,&rdquo; he presently muttered. &ldquo;We
+      are kind o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the
+      square mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young&mdash;bet yu'
+      I know who she is!&rdquo; he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a
+      finger at me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I nodded. This was not the lady's name&mdash;he could not recall her name&mdash;but
+      his geography of her was accurate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+      received a letter&mdash;no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+      days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all see
+      the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me. The
+      letter was signed,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever your afectionite frend.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Katie Peck,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+      drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+      when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+      Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should like
+      to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. &ldquo;Like to come and be like old
+      times&rdquo; filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers with
+      expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on Bear
+      Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she does not
+      come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned, and old girls
+      had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss Molly Wood (the
+      Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in order the cabin and the
+      children of the Taylors, while they were gone forty-five miles to the
+      stage station to meet their guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lin, judicially, &ldquo;Miss Wood is a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+      Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin thoughtfully continued. &ldquo;She is&mdash;she's&mdash;she's&mdash;what are
+      you laughin' at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to, do
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed better,
+      I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like gettin'
+      kissed against their wishes&mdash;and you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the point would rather seem to be that she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or I'll&mdash;I'll
+      talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard me do yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to point&mdash;that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+      right.&rdquo; He ruminated for a moment. &ldquo;She has about scared all the boys off,
+      though,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;And that's what you get by being refined,&rdquo; he
+      concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He was
+      there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk Creek.
+      Didn't seem particularly frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, nothin' alarms him&mdash;not even refinement,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean,
+      with his grin. &ldquo;And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+      of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+      would us poor punchers do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have me cornered,&rdquo; said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence, Lin
+      on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon a scene
+      my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring had passed over
+      it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels undulated in
+      emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this moment of to-day
+      was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the dimples of the
+      foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun melted among them.
+      Around the doubling of the creek in the willow thickets glimmered skeined
+      veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The stream poured turbulently away
+      from the snows of the mountains behind us. It went winding in many folds
+      across the meadows into distance and smallness, and so vanished round the
+      great red battlement of wall beyond. Upon this were falling the deep hues
+      of afternoon&mdash;violet, rose, and saffron, swimming and meeting as if
+      some prism had dissolved and flowed over the turrets and crevices of the
+      sandstone. Far over there I saw a dot move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin looked out of the window. &ldquo;It's more than Tommy,&rdquo; said he, at once;
+      and his eyes made it out before mine could. &ldquo;It's a wagon. That's Tommy's
+      bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish,&rdquo; Lin severely
+      commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least be a
+      homestretch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+      horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+      faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+      remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+      best understood by cows&mdash;&ldquo;Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+      oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!&rdquo; But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets are
+      worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can produce
+      these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such sounds
+      ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when the last
+      cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already befallen) the
+      yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle appeared to
+      appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that was plain even
+      at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch, after all. The
+      bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned beside the
+      wagon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showin' off,&rdquo; remarked Lin. &ldquo;Tommy's showin' off.&rdquo; Suspicion crossed his
+      face, and then certainty. &ldquo;Why, we might have knowed that!&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      in dudgeon. &ldquo;It's her.&rdquo; He hastened outside for a better look, and I came
+      to the door myself. &ldquo;That's what it is,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It's the girl. Oh yes.
+      That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for. She come by the stage
+      all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been too tired to travel, yu'
+      see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his buckskins&mdash;they're
+      four-year-olds. Or else&mdash;anyway, they laid over last night at Powder
+      River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu' see, holdin' the mail back
+      on us twenty-four hours&mdash;and that's your postmaster!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+      indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new girl,
+      I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade drew
+      near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention focused
+      upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear made a
+      cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly chirruped to
+      his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For Tommy wore
+      upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in the Wild West.
+      Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might have conducted a
+      show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person before the eyes of
+      princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake skin for a hat-band,
+      he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of buckskin, and concluded
+      with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there were things between his shirt
+      and his heels, but all leather and deadly weapons. He had also a riata, a
+      cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently employed these Spanish names for the
+      objects. I wish that I had not lost Tommy's photograph in Rocky Mountain
+      costume. You must understand that he was really pretty, with blue eyes,
+      ruddy cheeks, and a graceful figure; and, besides, he had twenty-four
+      hours' start of poor dusty Lin, whose best clothes were elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present us
+      to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook the
+      office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. &ldquo;Good friends of
+      mine, and gentlemen, both,&rdquo; said he to Miss Peck; and to us, &ldquo;A lady whose
+      acquaintance will prove a treat to our section.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+      recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its being
+      a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she exclaimed to Tommy, &ldquo;I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+      eggs you've spoke so much about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+      merely to exclaim, &ldquo;Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been laying
+      since Christmas!&rdquo; and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy try to find
+      all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore embarrassment to
+      the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels of the wagon. He
+      looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his features assumed a
+      rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if that ain't!&rdquo; cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin as
+      he now assisted her to descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All?&rdquo; faltered Tommy. &ldquo;Not the four nests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had three meals, yu' know,&rdquo; Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped him,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+      ham. Forgive us, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+      eyes upon me. &ldquo;You're a case, too, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot. In
+      her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned back
+      to Lin McLean. &ldquo;You carry that,&rdquo; said she, and gave the pleased
+      cow-puncher a hand valise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll look after your things, Miss Peck,&rdquo; called Tommy, now springing down
+      from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!&rdquo; said the lady, but
+      favoring him with a look from her large eyes. &ldquo;There's plenty of gentlemen
+      here.&rdquo; With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the cabin, he
+      following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear. &ldquo;Well, I
+      guess I'm about collapsed!&rdquo; said she, vigorously, and sank upon one of
+      Tommy's chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+      assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought a
+      basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+      whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have done
+      something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone to the
+      stable with the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such a
+      quick look at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine,&rdquo; said Lin, gallantly. &ldquo;Our
+      climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a case, anyway!&rdquo; exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and, throwing
+      one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with cheerful talk.
+      She steadily watched him&mdash;his face sometimes, sometimes his lounging,
+      masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to her, Taylor
+      departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor, busy with
+      supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at having her old
+      friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sickness has changed poor Katie some,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I'm hoping she'll
+      get back her looks on Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems less feeble than I had understood,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired and
+      down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But Taylor
+      and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day she's
+      real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long will she stay?&rdquo; I inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+      young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+      brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+      much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as Taylor
+      knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February, for you
+      always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times. Katie'll be
+      most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was sixteen the
+      very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got some good man
+      for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance, for there was a
+      big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real scandalous,
+      getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely at all. And so
+      she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the railroad eating-house
+      at Sidney, and now she has poor health with feeding them big trains day
+      and night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A biscuit-shooter!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said she then,
+      &ldquo;I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+      waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+      stations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+      dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for, and
+      will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you sprang
+      from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You discerned by
+      instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through doorways, had
+      taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in a room of tables
+      and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing attention, a platoon of
+      Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began immediately a swift chant. It
+      hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow. In this inexpressible ceremony
+      the name of every dish went hurtling into the next, telescoped to
+      shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your Amazon in the middle, it
+      dislocated her, and she merely went back and took a fresh start. The chant
+      was always the same, but you never learned it. As soon as it began, your
+      mind snapped shut like the upper berth in a Pullman. You must have uttered
+      appropriate words&mdash;even a parrot will&mdash;for next you were eating
+      things&mdash;pie, ham, hot cakes&mdash;as fast as you could. Twenty
+      minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with your pile-driven
+      stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is not dieted with
+      greater velocity, and &ldquo;biscuit-shooter&rdquo; is a grand word. Very likely some
+      Homer of the railroad yards first said it&mdash;for what men upon the
+      present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we Americans?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+      conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+      marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding in
+      response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her into
+      convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but allowed
+      the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly now and then,
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; and &ldquo;If you ain't!&rdquo; Lin was most certainly engaging, if that
+      was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled upon her, and he half
+      closed them now and then to look at her more effectively. I suppose she
+      was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say that she was handsome in a
+      large California-fruit style. They made a good-looking pair of animals.
+      But it was in the presence of Tommy that Master Lin shone more
+      energetically than ever, and under such shining Tommy was transparently
+      restless. He tried, and failed, to bring the conversation his way, and
+      took to rearranging the mail and the furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supper's ready,&rdquo; he said, at length. &ldquo;Come right in, Miss Peck; right in
+      here. This is your seat&mdash;this one, please. Now you can see my fields
+      out of the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sit here,&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was between
+      them. &ldquo;Them's elegant!&rdquo; she presently exclaimed to Tommy. &ldquo;Did you cook
+      'em?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of his
+      ranch, his potatoes, his horses. &ldquo;And do you punch cattle, too?&rdquo; she
+      inquired of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; said Tommy, slightingly; &ldquo;gave it up years ago; too empty a life for
+      me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own property&rdquo;&mdash;Tommy
+      swept his hand at the whole landscape&mdash;&ldquo;he takes to more intellectual
+      work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lickin' postage-stamps,&rdquo; Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lick them and I cancel them,&rdquo; answered the postmaster; and it does
+      not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's one on you,&rdquo; she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+      who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+      his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+      slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she went
+      for a little walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katie was ever a tease,&rdquo; said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+      Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. &ldquo;She'll get
+      used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,&rdquo;
+       said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was only
+      when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men choosing
+      various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a while. We lay
+      in the blank&mdash;we had spread on some soft, dry sand in preference to
+      the stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the contemplative
+      influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever notice,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not feel sure that I had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get to
+      require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever notice,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+      get to increasing the dose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him roping six bears!&rdquo; pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+      &ldquo;Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter other
+      men'll get? Why's that, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I sank
+      beyond his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+      remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+      did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at the
+      drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the daytime
+      there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and hearing the
+      news. There I heard how things were going everywhere, including Bear
+      Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was a
+      great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than the
+      school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and showed
+      it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town buying
+      presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for a
+      necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him. Too bad
+      Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only yesterday to
+      get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big joke on Lin
+      McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew the location
+      of, and Tommy got the bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They had
+      been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was in
+      visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering and
+      branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+      Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in camp.
+      Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely watching
+      Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way quite so
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said the Southerner, &ldquo;I reckon you're failin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants,&rdquo; pursued the Virginian.
+      The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+      young pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food,&rdquo; his ingenious friend
+      continued, slowly and gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't sca'cely hon'able,&rdquo; went on the Virginian, &ldquo;to waste away durin'
+      the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If he is paid
+      to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge or pull
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not many dodge my rope,&rdquo; boasted Lin, imprudently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+      plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. &ldquo;I'll improve,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so handy. Has
+      she promised to be your sister yet?&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what they do?&rdquo; inquired the Virginian, serenely. &ldquo;I have never
+      got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory is
+      to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted than
+      most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors',&rdquo; he now told the
+      camp. &ldquo;He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General Miles, and
+      General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in conversation,
+      and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck appeared
+      interested in his statements.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?&rdquo; demanded Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Visitin' Miss Wood,&rdquo; answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+      also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. &ldquo;You'd ought to write
+      to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is gettin'
+      to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and you would
+      have the runnin' all to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fix him yet,&rdquo; muttered Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Him and his wars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he rose and left us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+      spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+      therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was puzzled.
+      Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman had been a
+      transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty romances, where
+      the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and moved on. Nor had his
+      affairs been of the sort to teach a young man respect. I am putting it
+      rather mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after that
+      began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was a
+      serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A man
+      was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some day and
+      found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No interest, no
+      surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty owed him fifty
+      dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the round-up, and he, Lin,
+      would get his time and rustle altogether some five hundred dollars. Then
+      there was his homestead claim on Box Elder, and the surveyors were coming
+      in this fall. No better location for a home in this country than Box
+      Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it needed was a house and ditches and
+      buildings and fences, and to be planted with crops. Such chances and
+      considerations should sober a man and make him careful what he did. &ldquo;I'd
+      take in Cheyenne on our wedding-trip, and after that I'd settle right down
+      to improving Box Elder,&rdquo; concluded Mr. McLean, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not remotely
+      imagined such a step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her!&rdquo; I screeched in dismay. &ldquo;Marry her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but I
+      emphasized both thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't expect yu'd act that way,&rdquo; said the lover. He dropped behind me
+      fifty yards and spoke no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+      into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+      my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry or
+      wounded&mdash;resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as of
+      his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for a while
+      how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon abandoned
+      the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; I began, slowing my horse, &ldquo;you must not think about what I said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects,&rdquo; said he, and slowed his own horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, look here!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Astonishment makes a man say anything,&rdquo; I proceeded. &ldquo;And I'll say again
+      you're too good for her&mdash;and I'll say I don't generally believe in
+      the wife being older than the husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's two years?&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+      twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation of
+      the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+      estimate her own age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month,&rdquo; said Lin, with
+      sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. &ldquo;I promised her a
+      bear-skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I heard about that in Buffalo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin's face grew dusky with anger. &ldquo;No doubt yu' heard about it,&rdquo; said he.
+      &ldquo;I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told the truth
+      to any of 'em&mdash;but her.&rdquo; He looked at me with a certain hesitation.
+      &ldquo;I think I will,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I don't mind tellin' you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+      of rope that hung on his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+      something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+      named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+      notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+      cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+      the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+      them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+      bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+      she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+      was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+      spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come home
+      though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to see what
+      she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start whining, and
+      she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and lifts up a cub and
+      holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a person. And she rubbed
+      her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped her, and she cuffed the
+      cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away they starts rolling all
+      three of 'em! I watched that for a long while. That big thing just nursed
+      and played with them little cubs, beatin' em for a change onced in a
+      while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd sit up solemn and look all
+      around so life-like that I near busted. Why, how was I goin' to spoil
+      that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for I'd have hated to have Mrs.
+      Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She claimed I was scared to
+      shoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After you had told her why it was?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+      foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has the
+      skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+      Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But since she has taken you?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+      to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand also
+      the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these differed
+      from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand was why
+      Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque, a career
+      in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a present lacking
+      context&mdash;indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy would win!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I'm backing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back away!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Tommy can please a woman&mdash;him and his blue
+      eyes&mdash;but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better
+      than he knows about killin' Injuns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear about the Crows?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+      papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+      troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+      believed any Crows&mdash;&rdquo; he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter now?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing.&rdquo; He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+      extent. &ldquo;What made yu' say that to me?&rdquo; he asked, presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Colts ought not to marry,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the Virginian's
+      black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next the Taylors' that Lin
+      changed the lively course of thought that was evidently filling his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell yu',&rdquo; said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to the
+      black horse, &ldquo;for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the same.
+      She likes him dangling round her so earnest&mdash;him that no body ever
+      saw dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does
+      he get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the
+      Miss Woods of this world,&rdquo; he added, defiantly&mdash;&ldquo;except at long
+      range.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+      Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+      pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her&mdash;whether
+      the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company; whatever
+      had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair looked
+      curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and her cheeks
+      were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood talking sweetly to
+      her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was no doubt that he had
+      been &ldquo;raised good enough&rdquo; to appreciate her, no matter what had been his
+      raising!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin greeted every one jauntily. &ldquo;How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+      Tommy?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and then
+      he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, &ldquo;I hadn't been goin' to
+      mention it to the ladies until it was right sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck,&rdquo; said Tommy. &ldquo;There's lots of men
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's afraid?&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+      weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Tommy!&rdquo; called Taylor from the lane. &ldquo;Your horse has broke his
+      rein and run down the field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be cooking supper now,&rdquo; said Katie, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stir for yu',&rdquo; said Lin, grinning at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along then,&rdquo; said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+      Virginian, and she looked at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+      wasn't new any more it might become dull!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. &ldquo;But mightn't it become
+      just&mdash;just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very&mdash;determined,
+      you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one is determined,&rdquo; said the Virginian
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly looked inquiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what a notion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy&mdash;well, Tommy is considered harmless,
+      ma'am. A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never
+      let Tommy get ahaid of him that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!&rdquo; exclaimed Molly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ma'am,&rdquo; said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+      &ldquo;where is any countin' without some love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference between
+      thinkin' and feelin', ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her cheeks.
+      But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+      the jiste!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All cow-punchers&mdash;&rdquo; I attempted to resume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quit now, Lin McLean,&rdquo; shouted the voice, &ldquo;or I'll put yus through that
+      window, and it shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+      since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face. And
+      now I'm going to quit and cough back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?&rdquo; inquired the Virginian
+      as Molly rose. &ldquo;You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; said Molly, blithely. &ldquo;And you'll come?&rdquo; she added to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was on the Virginian's side. &ldquo;I must look after my horse,&rdquo; said I,
+      and went down to the corral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+      Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon. The
+      canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where I walked
+      the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where the
+      thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across the
+      silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he and
+      General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when
+      supper-time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account
+      to Mrs. Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he
+      was saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when you get old?&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am,&rdquo; said he, simply.
+      &ldquo;But I have a reason, and I am saving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the flowers,&rdquo; said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on the
+      table as Lin came hurrying out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told her,&rdquo; said he to the Southerner and me, &ldquo;that I've asked her
+      twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+      that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+      piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+      much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you.&rdquo; He took the
+      Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I began
+      to discern something quite definite at supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this,&rdquo; he
+      said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chap come into the round-up this afternoon,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;But he was
+      rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they wouldn't,&rdquo; said Tommy, haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's nothing in it,&rdquo; said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Taylor had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said the Virginian, &ldquo;did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in the
+      mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good&mdash;not in her class o'
+      sports, smugglin' and such.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+      mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption,&rdquo; said the
+      Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talking of mountains,&rdquo; said Tommy, &ldquo;this range here used to be a great
+      place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the red
+      sons-of-guns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+      and quit him, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon,&rdquo; replied the Virginian, &ldquo;that the bull-fighter wore better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin',&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;My! but I'd like
+      to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+      maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+      grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made of
+      the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that Tommy
+      had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his campaigns.
+      But when the hour came for those visitors who were not spending the night
+      to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me, and I noticed the
+      Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed diversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't seem to make anything of it,&rdquo; whispered Taylor to Tommy, &ldquo;but the
+      ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I'll just explain&mdash;&rdquo; began Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't,&rdquo; whispered Lin, joining us. &ldquo;Yu' know how women are. Once they
+      take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+      him and me&rdquo; (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) &ldquo;must go back to
+      camp, for we're on second relief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+      house,&rdquo; said Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; said Tommy, &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' see,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+      nights ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't!&rdquo; cried Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course it ain't,&rdquo; drawled the ingenious Lin. &ldquo;But that's what I
+      say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from our
+      own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these nervous
+      notions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+      Riverside,&rdquo; repeated Taylor, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But just kind of stay here,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; exclaimed Tommy. &ldquo;Of course, I'm glad to oblige.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than its
+      results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He was to be
+      kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they proposed to
+      visit his empty cabin and play tricks&mdash;but that would be too
+      childish, even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his
+      occasional partner in mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of the Crows,&rdquo; I satirically told the ladies, &ldquo;I shall sleep
+      outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid a
+      hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the galloping
+      horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and crossed to her
+      little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in that blessed
+      country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+      half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long, wild yell
+      now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no pistol&mdash;nothing.
+      In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought was &ldquo;House!
+      House!&rdquo; and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to the cabin, when
+      round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I understood. I saw the
+      Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw his teeth as he smiled. I
+      hastened to my blankets, and returned more decent to stand and watch the
+      two go shooting and yelling round the cabin, crazy with their youth. The
+      door was opened, and Taylor courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He
+      fired at the sky immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;B' gosh!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;That's one.&rdquo; He fired again. &ldquo;Out and at 'em.
+      They're running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+      white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots by
+      the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted and
+      joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about with
+      them, helping the din.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Taylor!&rdquo; said a voice. &ldquo;I didn't think it of you.&rdquo; It was Molly
+      Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+      She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, friends!&rdquo; said Taylor, gasping. &ldquo;She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+      I'd hate to have Bobbie&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak to your papa,&rdquo; said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll be gol-darned,&rdquo; said Taylor, surveying his costume, &ldquo;if Lin
+      McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where has Tommy got?&rdquo; said Mrs. Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't yus see him?&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word in
+      all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+      Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+      plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; murmured the Virginian to himself, &ldquo;if I could have foresaw, I'd
+      not&mdash;it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+      perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything, and
+      presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent cabin,
+      mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the night at
+      Riverside, after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+      table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+      one when you think of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian how
+      the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush, bearing
+      the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the peace. She was
+      astride the horse he had brought for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he beat Tommy,&rdquo; said the Virginian. &ldquo;Some folks, anyway, get what
+      they want in this hyeh world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there was
+      no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this that
+      set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+      fertility of the soil&mdash;when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+      made&mdash;with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying
+      to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+      arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+      here&mdash;with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically,
+      that anything could fly&mdash;with wings. Then we would lead such a man
+      out and show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if
+      he was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+      thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+      Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+      Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him the
+      glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+      Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+      far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+      pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+      narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+      of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+      Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+      that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+      feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+      travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+      meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For purposes of amusement,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll admit anything you claim for
+      this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+      investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall,&rdquo; I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+      something to him &ldquo;for purposes of amusement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fellows come up with me to my office,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;I'll look
+      at my mail, and show you round.&rdquo; So we went with him through the heat and
+      sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is our park,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+      wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi&mdash;&rdquo; I checked
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ogden said &ldquo;with irrigation&rdquo; for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his letters
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you are, Ogden,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Here's the way we hump ahead out here.&rdquo;
+       And he read us the following:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&mdash;Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+      drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad to
+      furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully in
+      Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+      exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover, as
+      I said, merely my necessary expenses&mdash;say $350 (three hundred and
+      fifty dollars)&mdash;for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity
+      of rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction
+      of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+      what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+      twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;I am, respectfully yours,
+
+                                &ldquo;Robert Hilbrun&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the Legislature do it?&rdquo; inquired Ogden in good faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed boisterously. &ldquo;I guess it wouldn't be
+      constitutional,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; said Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear man,&rdquo; the Governor protested, &ldquo;I know we're new, and our women
+      vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+      funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would fly
+      right into my back hair.&rdquo; Barker was also new as Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you have Senators here too?&rdquo; said Ogden, raising his eyebrows. &ldquo;What
+      do they look like? Are they females?&rdquo; And the Governor grew more
+      boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+      men were certainly &ldquo;out of sight&rdquo;. Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's an idea!&rdquo; cried the Governor. &ldquo;Nothing unconstitutional about
+      that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put up a hundred,&rdquo; said Ogden, promptly. &ldquo;I'm out for a Western
+      vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help of
+      some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised. &ldquo;He
+      won't care,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;whether it's a private enterprise or a
+      municipal step, so long as he gets his money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't get it, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said Ogden. &ldquo;But if he succeeds in tempting
+      Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you call those
+      people there on the horses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and looking
+      out over the plain toward Fort Russell. &ldquo;That is a cow-puncher and his
+      bride,&rdquo; I answered, recognizing the couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real cow-puncher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real bride?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's riding straddle!&rdquo; exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+      glasses. &ldquo;Why do you object to their union being holy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+      precipitately and against my advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he knew his business,&rdquo; observed Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her&mdash;and
+      know him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+      to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at meeting
+      with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked at her,
+      and I instantly knew that Lin&mdash;the fool!&mdash;had confided to her my
+      disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+      your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, Mr. McLean,&rdquo; said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How're are yu', doctor,&rdquo; said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+      Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+      at Drybone. &ldquo;Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean,&rdquo; pursued the husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to a
+      Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+      haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+      would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at her,
+      extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her big,
+      dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+      compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+      flesh image, &ldquo;I'm glad I came.&rdquo; The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+      also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+      cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+      white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+      course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man that
+      wore them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in town?
+      Circus come yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Are you going to make a long stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. &ldquo;Till
+      we're tired of it, I guess,&rdquo; said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+      time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+      felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house lady, the
+      biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty, irrepressible
+      spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him, and now she was
+      going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at her too,
+      thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lin,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if you stay here long enough you'll see a big show.&rdquo;
+       And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I told him
+      of the rain-maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+      entertained at our venture. &ldquo;Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me come
+      in&rdquo;; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised, he was
+      hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess,&rdquo; spoke the
+      image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I know
+      that Lin did. The image continued: &ldquo;Some folks and their money are soon
+      parted&rdquo;&mdash;she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I was
+      sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable opinion
+      of her&mdash;&ldquo;but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged ap!&rdquo;
+       This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says the
+      husband immediately started off on a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+      railroad ties, exclaiming: &ldquo;Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+      came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's who she is!&rdquo; said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+      once. &ldquo;I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+      somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!&rdquo; he
+      continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated &ldquo;Bigamy!&rdquo; &ldquo;Lots of them
+      marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on to a new
+      man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, I beg,&rdquo; said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. &ldquo;What does the law&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law?&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Look at that place!&rdquo; He swept his hand towards
+      the vast plains and the mountains. &ldquo;Ninety-five thousand square miles of
+      that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen yet on top
+      of the Rocky Mountains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the New-Yorker. &ldquo;But&mdash;but&mdash;well let A and B
+      represent first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does
+      A know about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say,&rdquo; the Governor answered, jovially. &ldquo;Can't generalize. Depends
+      on heaps of things&mdash;love&mdash;money&mdash;Did you go to college?
+      Well, let A minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come to lunch,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Barker, do you really know the first husband
+      is alive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn't dead last winter.&rdquo; And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss Katie
+      Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was wooed and won by
+      a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder, a bar-tender, a freight
+      hand, and was then hauling poles for the government. During his necessary
+      absences from home she, too, went out-of-doors. This he often discovered,
+      and would beat her, and she would then also beat him. After the beatings
+      one of them would always leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in
+      small-talk until Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. &ldquo;Lusk,&rdquo; said
+      the Governor, finishing his story, &ldquo;cried around the saloons for a couple
+      of days, and then went on hauling poles for the government, till at last
+      he said he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was
+      round Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay with
+      Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+      McLean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll notice,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;how she has got him under in three
+      weeks. Old hand, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Lin!&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky, I call him,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;He can quit her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn pretty
+      quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip. Hello! here
+      comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New York, Mr.
+      Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden.&rdquo; The Governor's
+      eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+      acquaintance,&rdquo; said the signal-service officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jode, when is it going to rain?&rdquo; said the Governor, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He has
+      the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+      representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+      themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in&mdash;I
+      think he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton
+      Manigault Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then,
+      but his health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black;
+      his face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a
+      spout&mdash;the same narrow size all the way down&mdash;and his voice was
+      as dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had
+      constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with his
+      dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted
+      apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much satisfaction
+      also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he came to see
+      that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was published,
+      and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen, along with
+      other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and he passed his
+      careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina impressiveness.
+      &ldquo;There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing pressure,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's what I thought,&rdquo; said the joyous Governor, &ldquo;so I'm going to
+      whoop her up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you expect to whoop up, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Atmosphere, and all that,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Whole business has got to
+      get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir,&rdquo; said Jode, who enjoyed Barker as
+      some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we had
+      reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter had
+      actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers with
+      him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position. &ldquo;Have
+      your joke, sir,&rdquo; he said, waving a thin, clean hand, &ldquo;but I decline to
+      meet him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hilbrun?&rdquo; said the Governor, staring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that's his name&mdash;yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and
+      the Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glory!&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Well, I suppose not. I see your point, Jode.
+      I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+      Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure. All
+      very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+      consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow&mdash;too
+      slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+      does its business by is out of date.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite serious, sir,&rdquo; said Jode. &ldquo;And let me express my gratification
+      that you do see my point.&rdquo; So we changed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond those
+      who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed curiosity about
+      Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in the street that he was
+      disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the enterprise. &ldquo;But the boys
+      would fly right at it and stay with it if the round-up was near town, you
+      bet,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was walking alone. &ldquo;How's Mrs. McLean to-day?&rdquo; I inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's well,&rdquo; said Lin, turning his eye from mine. &ldquo;Who's your friend all
+      bugged up in English clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About as good a man as you,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and more cautious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him and his eye-glasses!&rdquo; said the sceptical puncher, still looking away
+      from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor. That
+      excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his teeth
+      shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telegram from Hilbrun,&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;be here to-morrow&rdquo;; and he hastened
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+      private,&rdquo; added Ogden. &ldquo;Great, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+      excitement mollified Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?&rdquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never. Have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+      excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're going to show the telegram to Jode,&rdquo; said the Governor; and he and
+      Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I must be getting along myself,&rdquo; said Lin; but he continued walking
+      slowly with me. &ldquo;Where're yu' bound?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere in particular,&rdquo; said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a little
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going to meet the train to-morrow?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's the
+      rule. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't wonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it'll be fun to see him try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See you to-morrow, Lin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure. A
+      hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after him,
+      pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the club,
+      telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had inquired
+      for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that he had
+      lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying &ldquo;I told you so&rdquo;
+       to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had not come
+      so home to me until our little walk together just now along the boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty&mdash;a
+      particular drink, the Allston cocktail. &ldquo;It's the bitters that does the
+      trick,&rdquo; he was saying, but saw me and called out: &ldquo;You ought to have been
+      with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read it
+      through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with his
+      anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get out he
+      sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so I said,
+      'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And Jode, he
+      quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your despatch is
+      genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!&rdquo; And the Governor slapped
+      his knee. &ldquo;Why, he's so set against Hilbrun,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I guess if he
+      knew of something he could explode to stop rain he'd let her fly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he wouldn't,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He'd not consider that honorable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; the Governor assented. &ldquo;Jode'll play fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise&mdash;a game between a
+      well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan. And
+      it was the charlatan had our sympathy&mdash;as all charlatans, whether
+      religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+      average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+      I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary and
+      the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the cart,
+      and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned out an
+      unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not remember
+      afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it was a hot
+      day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he put into the
+      cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance to the eye. He
+      desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his apparatus in the
+      building provided for him; and we set out for it at once. It was an
+      untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant might cut a hole
+      in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for the first time&mdash;a
+      tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak mouth. &ldquo;This is Mr.
+      Lusk,&rdquo; said the rain-maker; and we shook hands, Ogden and I exchanging a
+      glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill Street&mdash;or Capitol
+      Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has grown fuller of pomp and
+      emptier of prosperity&mdash;and I thought we made an unusual procession:
+      the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the way to the barn; the
+      cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his packed-up mysteries;
+      McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious bigamy; and in the rear,
+      Odgen nudging me in the ribs. That it was the correct Lusk we had with us
+      I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy, vacant appearance,
+      strong-bodied and shiftless&mdash;the sort of man to weary of one trade
+      and another, and make a failure of wife beating between whiles. In
+      Twenty-fourth Street&mdash;the town's uttermost rim&mdash;the Governor met
+      us, and stared at Lusk. &ldquo;Christopher!&rdquo; was his single observation; but he
+      never forgets a face&mdash;cannot afford to, now that he is in politics;
+      and, besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a man to whom
+      you owe ten dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you've quit hauling poles?&rdquo; said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in it, sir,&rdquo; said Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?&rdquo; asked the
+      rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! going to throw your bombs through it?&rdquo; said the Governor, smiling
+      heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system, but
+      a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. &ldquo;Not that the bomb
+      don't produce first-class results at times and under circumstances,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;but it's uncertain and costly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told us
+      was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+      owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+      hole, which saved delay. &ldquo;And what day would you prefer the shower?&rdquo; said
+      Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any day would do,&rdquo; the Governor said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+      business to detain him from witnessing the shower&mdash;though it seemed
+      to me that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable
+      as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+      them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+      stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry and
+      hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a sorry spectacle in the street&mdash;the bridegroom and the bride
+      shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+      paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a scarlet
+      parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of purchase
+      on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with splendor,
+      like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as well have
+      been behind, and his bearing was so different from his wonted
+      happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk.&rdquo; But it was &ldquo;Mrs. McLean&rdquo; I said, of course. She
+      gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, &ldquo;Come on, Lin,&rdquo; something like
+      a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a good-humored,
+      jocular answer, and said to me, &ldquo;It takes a woman to know what to buy for
+      house-keepin,&rdquo;; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared him to me more than
+      ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in keeping appearances,
+      but he deserved success, which the angels consider to be enough. I
+      wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were only the
+      preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but one test
+      could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs. Lusk, perhaps
+      not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant rain-maker kept
+      himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the north corner of
+      Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at all, haunted the
+      shops clear across town diagonally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+      building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+      the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+      sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+      contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+      pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+      Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+      about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing. The
+      Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+      twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+      chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+      doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+      there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the barn,
+      snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be chlorine,
+      the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part responsible;
+      and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The world was as
+      still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever; and the sky
+      over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours. This tenacity in
+      the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official pleasure. We could
+      tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor reminded him that no
+      rain was contracted for until the next day, he mentioned that the approach
+      of a storm is something that modern science is able to ascertain long in
+      advance; and he bade us come to his office whenever we pleased, and see
+      for ourselves what science said. This was, at any rate, something to fill
+      the afternoon with, and we went to him about five. Lin McLean joined us on
+      the way. I came upon him lingering alone in the street, and he told me
+      that Mrs. McLean was calling on friends. I saw that he did not know how to
+      spend the short recess or holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the
+      society of others, and with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He
+      had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found
+      pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode
+      received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his
+      instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hair hygrometer,&rdquo; he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it. &ldquo;The
+      indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of a prepared
+      human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the divided arc of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?&rdquo; called out the Governor, who
+      had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the tubes and
+      dials. &ldquo;What will this one do?&rdquo; he asked, and poked at a wet paper disc.
+      But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had to do with
+      evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention wandered, and he
+      was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly revolved and set a
+      number of dial hands going different ways. &ldquo;Hi!&rdquo; said the Governor,
+      delighted. &ldquo;Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air velocity in feet.
+      Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What you'll need,
+      Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor,&rdquo; Jode retorted at once.
+      &ldquo;And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+      there.&rdquo; He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+      crystal. &ldquo;An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen,&rdquo; Jode
+      continued&mdash;though none of us would have said anything like that&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+      corroborated, as you will find you must admit.&rdquo; Jode's voice was almost
+      threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+      passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers; I
+      caught the fleeting sound of words like &ldquo;meniscus&rdquo; and &ldquo;terrestrial
+      minimum thermometer,&rdquo; and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some
+      calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand&mdash;a
+      series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers
+      all over the United States. He read each one through from date of
+      signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. &ldquo;And
+      I tell you,&rdquo; Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, &ldquo;there's no
+      chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,&rdquo;&mdash;he was shrieking
+      jubilantly&mdash;&ldquo;there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; said
+      the Governor. &ldquo;I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+      scientist. &ldquo;That's what they all say,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'll do my talking
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any of you gentlemen, or your friends,&rdquo; said Assistant Lusk, stepping
+      up, &ldquo;feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to accommodate
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do yu' want this evenin'?&rdquo; said Lin McLean, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five to one,&rdquo; said Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go yu' in twenties,&rdquo; said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived this
+      was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out&mdash;or what of
+      it still survived his bride's shopping. &ldquo;Will you hold stakes, doctor?&rdquo; he
+      said to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five to
+      one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and then
+      me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered our
+      bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next morning. I
+      have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a universal search
+      for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes instantly whipped out
+      his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and disqualified himself. It
+      was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but was anxious to serve, and
+      thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze anywhere,
+      and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was freely
+      offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so she might
+      wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed husband
+      rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad of money
+      staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented their lack
+      of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that it was
+      Sunday, and the banks closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside the hot
+      town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube, the possible
+      smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the extraordinary
+      assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one restless and
+      eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella. In a moment
+      the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs. Old Judge
+      Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast progress of
+      science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the well-known
+      legend, &ldquo;I am somewhat of a liar myself.&rdquo; And all the while the sun shone
+      high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the certainty of
+      victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came from church, and
+      no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with a chill smile, that
+      he had visited his instruments and found no new indications. Fifteen
+      minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden, padded, dropsical clouds
+      were born in the blue above our heads. They blackened, and a smart shower,
+      the first in two months, wet us all, and ceased. The sun blazed out, and
+      the sky came blue again, like those rapid, unconvincing weather changes of
+      the drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things on
+      earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized upon
+      Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+      punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger and
+      acquaintance: &ldquo;It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me&rdquo;' And the crowd
+      would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as he went
+      proclaiming to the world. &ldquo;A failure, sir! The fellow's an impostor, as I
+      well knew. It's no half-inch!&rdquo; Which was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you got to say to that?&rdquo; we asked Hilbrun, swarming around him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll just keep cool,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;it's only the first instalment.
+      In about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+      open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+      herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+      Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences and
+      sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down door-steps,
+      women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the chattering Jode
+      flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge Burrage apostrophized
+      Providence in his front yard, with the postmaster's label still pinned to
+      his back. Nobody minded the sluicing downpour&mdash;this second instalment
+      was much more of a thing than the first&mdash;and Hilbrun alone kept a
+      calm exterior&mdash;the face of the man who lifts a heavy dumb-bell and
+      throws an impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no
+      means thus proof against success I saw him put a bottle back in his
+      pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage,
+      perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded toward him,
+      extending the hand of congratulation. &ldquo;Mr. Hilbrun,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I am Judge
+      Burrage&mdash;the Honorable T. Coleman Burrage&mdash;and I will say that I
+      am most favorably impressed with your shower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His shower!&rdquo; yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?&rdquo; said Lin McLean, grinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jode, ignoring the
+      facetious puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're mistaken,&rdquo; said Hilbrun, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's short he don't get his money,&rdquo; said some ignoble subscriber
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he will,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;or I'm a short. He's earned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet &ldquo;' said Lin. &ldquo;Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+      doctor, I'll chip&mdash;Shucks!&rdquo; Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket; he
+      remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now possessed
+      possibly two dollars in silver, all told. &ldquo;I can't chip in, doctor,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's filling up on the
+      prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest show I've ever saw.
+      You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!&rdquo; And Lin clapped the rain-maker on the
+      shoulder, exulting. He had been too well entertained to care what he had
+      in his pocket, and his wife had not yet occurred to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under half
+      an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we stood
+      talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to Jode,
+      saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously with these,
+      riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out the rain had
+      flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from as far as
+      thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a cloud. It
+      staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the rain-maker, &ldquo;I'm packed up, and my train'll be
+      along soon&mdash;would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+      word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely performed
+      his side of the contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think different, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But I'll unpack and let that
+      train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay me&rdquo;
+       (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence)
+      &ldquo;I'll flood your town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in the
+      total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards and
+      precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+      unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm obliged,&rdquo; said Hilbrun, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had foreseen, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jode, too deeply grieved now to feel
+      anger, &ldquo;that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing your
+      money through this&mdash;this absurd occurrence, I would have declined to
+      help you. It becomes my duty,&rdquo; he continued, turning coldly to the
+      inebriated Lusk, &ldquo;to hand this to you, sir.&rdquo; And the assistant lurchingly
+      stuffed his stakes away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's worth it,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;He's welcome to my cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that you say, Lin McLean?&rdquo; It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+      surged to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm broke. He's got it. That's all,&rdquo; said Lin, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Broke! You!&rdquo; She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+      preliminary howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. &ldquo;It's my darling Kate,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Why, Kate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean; for
+      everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first
+      wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying
+      to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at
+      sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off.
+      The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and
+      affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel, indifferent
+      to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at Lin. &ldquo;Don't yus
+      dare lay yer finger on my husband, you sage-brush bigamist!&rdquo; is what the
+      marvelous female said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bigamist?&rdquo; repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. &ldquo;I ain't,&rdquo; he said to
+      Ogden and me. &ldquo;I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+      before ever I come acrosst yus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and him?&rdquo; murmured the puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her and me,&rdquo; whimpered Lusk. &ldquo;Sidney.&rdquo; He sat up with a limp, confiding
+      stare at everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney who?&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; corrected Lusk, crossly&mdash;&ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice. But
+      the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are yu', anyway&mdash;when yu' ain't drunk?&rdquo; demanded Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as good a man as you, and better,&rdquo; snorted the guardian angel. &ldquo;Give
+      him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska&mdash;&rdquo; Lin began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew&mdash;&ldquo;Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the rain-maker. &ldquo;That's the west-bound. I'm
+      perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+      Salt Lake City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo; shouted Lin McLean. &ldquo;Him and Jim's going to work it again! For
+      goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+      the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+      Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten, and
+      ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his duties
+      should detain him. But Jode went!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he to Ogden, McLean, and
+      me, &ldquo;and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way are yu' bettin'?&rdquo; Lin asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my principles, sir,&rdquo; answered the little signal-service officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect I ain't got any,&rdquo; said the puncher. &ldquo;It's Jim I'm backin' this
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;I want to talk to you.&rdquo; We went into another car, and
+      I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?&rdquo; the
+      puncher said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean I ought to have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all the
+      same. Yu' have good friends, and all that.&rdquo; He looked out of the window.
+      &ldquo;Laramie already!&rdquo; he commented, and got out and walked by himself on the
+      platform until we had started again. &ldquo;Yu' have good friends,&rdquo; he pursued,
+      settling himself so his long legs were stretched and comfortable, &ldquo;and
+      they tell yu' things, and you tell them things. And when it don't make no
+      particular matter one way or the other, yu' give 'em your honest opinion
+      and talk straight to 'em, and they'll come to you the same way. So that
+      when yu're ridin' the range alone sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things
+      over on top maybe of some dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about
+      some fellow yu' know mighty well, 'There's a man is a good friend of
+      mine.' And yu' mean it. And it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced
+      in a while they're bound to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the
+      man then&mdash;your good friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be.
+      Standin' off, keepin' his mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail
+      out. If he tried to show it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks!
+      Circumstances have showed me the trail this time, you bet!&rdquo; And the
+      puncher's face, which had been sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly
+      hand on my knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trail's pretty simple,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu',&rdquo; said Lin, with the air
+      of having made a discovery, &ldquo;when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs in
+      this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his dyin'.
+      I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell their
+      wives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never was married,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no more was I. Let's go to bed.&rdquo; And Lin shook my hand, and
+      gave me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western holiday,
+      we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against rain&mdash;only
+      I noticed that those of the true faith were less free. Indeed; the Mormon,
+      the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine have a nice prudence in
+      money. During our brief stay we visited the sights: floating in the lake,
+      listening to pins drop in the gallery of the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of
+      saints in robes speaking from heaven to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes
+      of a modern farm-hand, and in the street we heard at a distance a
+      strenuous domestic talk between the new&mdash;or perhaps I should say the
+      original&mdash;husband and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's corralled Sidney's cash!&rdquo; said the delighted Lin. &ldquo;He can't bet
+      nothing on this shower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, after all, this time&mdash;it didn't rain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased a
+      return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went somewhere
+      else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the money,
+      retained him with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good luck to yu', Sidney!&rdquo; said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+      since Cheyenne. &ldquo;I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married.&rdquo; He paid
+      no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that she
+      threw after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jode also felt &ldquo;a heap better.&rdquo; Legitimate science had triumphed. To-day,
+      most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a coincidence. South
+      Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin the few dollars that
+      I had lent the puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will you do now?&rdquo; I said to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+      keep a single man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+      lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it
+      between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew absent
+      as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a slight
+      pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be more in
+      seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children to whom his
+      excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had put off this
+      regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom, and now he was
+      setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely planless among the
+      guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround him. As he reached
+      the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed from a distance, and,
+      turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into town from the plain. One
+      who had shouted to him galloped out from the others, rounded the Capitol's
+      enclosure, and, approaching with radiant countenance leaned to reach the
+      hand of the Governor, and once again greeted him with a hilarious &ldquo;Hello,
+      Doc!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several years,
+      hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and, inquiring who
+      might be the other riders behind, was told that they were Shorty,
+      Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. &ldquo;And dandies to hit town
+      with,&rdquo; Mr. McLean added. &ldquo;Red-hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am acquainted with them,&rdquo; assented his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks,&rdquo; the cow-puncher continued,
+      &ldquo;makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every day.
+      So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to feed
+      high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+      holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+      their coming rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've soured on scenery,&rdquo; he finished, in his drastic idiom. &ldquo;We're sick
+      of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call on me,&rdquo; remarked the Governor, cheerily, &ldquo;when you're ready for
+      bromides and sulphates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't box-headed no more,&rdquo; protested Mr. McLean; &ldquo;I've got maturity,
+      Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+      hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+      That's my rule.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That your rule, too?&rdquo; inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye, and
+      Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+      expressionless upon their horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain't talkin', we're waitin',&rdquo; observed Chalkeye; and the three cynics
+      smiled amiably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Doc, see yu' again,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+      brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or came
+      up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+      unsuspecting Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your hurry?&rdquo; said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty manner.
+      &ldquo;Come along with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christmasing,&rdquo; replied Fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'm buying toys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toys! You? What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, some kids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yourn?&rdquo; screeched Lin, precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+      for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he held
+      up for the edification of the hasty McLean. &ldquo;Not mine, I'm happy to say.
+      My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me uncle, and
+      climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think it's a girl,
+      and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these little folks at
+      Christmas they'd be wondering&mdash;not the kids, they just break your
+      toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder&mdash;'What's the
+      matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on us?'&mdash;that's
+      where the strain comes!&rdquo; he broke off, facing Mr. McLean with another
+      spacious laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran on
+      exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and intent,
+      and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+      Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+      outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+      drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a stick,
+      and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too much, and
+      you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie, and&mdash;well,
+      I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in luck. Christmas
+      don't trouble a chap fixed like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A chap fixed like you!&rdquo; The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. &ldquo;No,
+      sure.&rdquo; He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+      going down the road. &ldquo;That's a new idea&mdash;Christmas,&rdquo; he murmured, for
+      it was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+      his first long trousers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comes once a year pretty regular,&rdquo; remarked the prosperous Governor.
+      &ldquo;Seems often when you pay the bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't made a Christmas gift,&rdquo; pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily, &ldquo;not
+      for&mdash;for&mdash;Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know
+      anybody that has any right to look for such a thing from me.&rdquo; This was
+      indeed a new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; said Barker, briskly, &ldquo;there goes twelve o'clock. I've got to
+      make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+      in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with
+      the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+      imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he
+      struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some
+      omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look up,
+      and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him go,
+      and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his speed when Lin
+      overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they took a side
+      street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and wrote it as he
+      walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and met face to face
+      with Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boys are seein' after my horse,&rdquo; Lin rapidly began, &ldquo;and I've got to
+      meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu' see,
+      and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to&mdash;&rdquo; Here
+      Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. &ldquo;Doc,
+      I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'&mdash;them monkeys, yu'
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind, and
+      was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending selections.
+      A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple of dolls rose
+      nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an imperfect honesty that
+      he said, &ldquo;You'll help me a heap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Lin, quite sincere, replied, &ldquo;Thank yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+      Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+      good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+      the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has
+      been as good as another in three places&mdash;Paradise before the Fall;
+      the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+      Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as young
+      as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+      thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known the
+      cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without breeding
+      contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder and drew
+      him among the petticoats and toys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+      not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+      world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+      together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+      children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+      the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin saw
+      them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+      hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+      thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of
+      the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that
+      undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human
+      face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding
+      eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children escaped
+      from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and
+      meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with rabbits
+      and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the sound of
+      musical boxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+      human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+      talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours, and
+      whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed knit in
+      a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses must have
+      been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after much nice
+      adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both ends meeting,
+      and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that his children
+      must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step toward them. There
+      were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at
+      that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with
+      competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away
+      in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier. But here was not the
+      moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place.
+      The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon their errands, and
+      aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a spirit looking on from
+      the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving needs and kindnesses of man
+      were within arm's touch of him, he was locked outside with his impulses.
+      Barker had, in the natural press of customers, long parted from him, to
+      become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of
+      his mission accomplished, he was ready to go on to the next place, and
+      turned to beckon McLean. He found him obliterated in a corner beside a
+      life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks livelier than you do,&rdquo; said the hearty Governor. &ldquo;'Fraid it's
+      been slow waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. &ldquo;No, I guess not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+      &ldquo;You never did lie to me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;long as I've known you. Well, never
+      mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. &ldquo;Say Doc,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what do
+      yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A big practice&mdash;big enough to interfere with my politics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else? Things and truck, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they? Don't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you're in earnest!&rdquo; cried his Excellency. &ldquo;That's simply rich!&rdquo;
+       Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town &ldquo;heeled for a big
+      time,&rdquo; finds that presents are all the rage, and must immediately give
+      somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous Frontier! So thought the
+      good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial misconception. &ldquo;My dear
+      fellow,&rdquo; he added, meaning as well as possible, &ldquo;I don't want you to spend
+      your money on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got plenty all right,&rdquo; said Lin, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with you.
+      You didn't expect anything from me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ain't&mdash;that don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+      Here's our shop.&rdquo; They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+      counters. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; pursued the Governor, &ldquo;this is for a very particular
+      friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+      number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision after
+      one look. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+      Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+      pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound, or,
+      at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned that
+      there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. &ldquo;I know that
+      Tennyson is what she&mdash;is what's wanted,&rdquo; he muttered; and, feeling
+      himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture he
+      took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand, found
+      himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and the
+      cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all people.
+      Barker picked it up and gave it back. &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; he said, mirthful over
+      his own inclination to be annoyed; &ldquo;you can't do that. I'm just as much
+      obliged, Lin,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as a loan, Doc&mdash;some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp young lady
+      was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily for Tennyson's
+      expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his discountenanced savings
+      back into his clothes. Making haste to leave the book department of this
+      shop, they regained a mutual ease, and the Governor became waggish over
+      Lin's concern at being too rich. He suggested to him the list of
+      delinquent taxpayers and the latest census from which to select indigent
+      persons. He had patients, too, whose inveterate pennilessness he could
+      swear cheerfully to&mdash;&ldquo;since you want to bolt from your own money,&rdquo; he
+      remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm a green horse,&rdquo; assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; &ldquo;ain't used to
+      the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From his face&mdash;that jocular mask&mdash;one might have counted him the
+      most serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+      voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be, would
+      have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering body, but
+      Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean of old
+      days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy ground.
+      &ldquo;I've got it!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;give your wife something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+      with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+      and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+      &ldquo;If you'll give me her name and address,&rdquo; said he, with the future
+      entirely in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Laramie!&rdquo; and the Governor feigned surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Doc,&rdquo; said Lin, uneasily, &ldquo;none of 'em ain't married me since I saw
+      yu' last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she hasn't written from Laramie,&rdquo; said the hilarious Governor, and
+      Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; went
+      on Barker, &ldquo;I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mask fell now. &ldquo;You're talking of his wife, not mine,&rdquo; said the
+      cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; &ldquo;and, Doc, I'm going to say
+      a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll never
+      forget that day myself&mdash;but I don't want to be reminded of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a fool, Lin,&rdquo; said the Governor, generous instantly. &ldquo;I never
+      supposed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way&mdash;in
+      a way&mdash;&rdquo; Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker,
+      seeing how wistful his face had turned, waited. &ldquo;But I ain't quite the
+      same fool I was before that happened to me,&rdquo; the cow-puncher resumed,
+      &ldquo;though maybe my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was
+      better luck than a man like me had any call to look for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sobered Barker said, simply, &ldquo;Yes, Lin.&rdquo; He was put to thinking by
+      these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick, red
+      cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole knowledge
+      of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle and took her
+      fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife to the best of
+      his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were confident he would
+      never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival and beating him had
+      swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the marriage was an
+      inadvertence. &ldquo;He jest bumped into it before he could pull up,&rdquo; they
+      explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's sporting blood,
+      had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali. For the new-made
+      husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that came upon him he
+      tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before, and learned also
+      how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink beneath the man in
+      baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived innocent until this
+      time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so that citizens in
+      Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued shrewdly that men
+      of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the strain had broken
+      his endurance an unexpected first husband, named Lusk, had appeared one
+      Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving, and exceedingly drunk. To the
+      arms of Lusk she went back in the public street, deserting McLean in the
+      presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne saw this, and learned how she had
+      been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed
+      loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too, and went about his business, ready to
+      swagger at the necessary moment, and with the necessary kind of joke
+      always ready to shield his hurt spirit. And soon, of course, the matter
+      grew stale, seldom raked up in the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at
+      work; so lately he had begun to remember other things beside the
+      smouldering humiliation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she with him?&rdquo; he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+      told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the moral
+      that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and revealed
+      the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he quieted
+      the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote about the house
+      of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on Mondays,
+      Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days, thus getting
+      one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined his opinion of the
+      family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker detailed these
+      incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs. Lusk addicted to
+      opium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em,&rdquo; said McLean, grimly, &ldquo;if I
+      strike Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?&rdquo; Barker
+      ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only&mdash;yu' see now. A man gets
+      tired pretending&mdash;onced in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+      Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+      shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+      hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness of
+      the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys. He had
+      come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and well
+      disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing with each
+      other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of hurry to escape
+      from that loneliness where his human promptings had been lodged with him
+      useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale, and he with his
+      pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of Shorty, and Chalkeye,
+      and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with, he stepped out with a
+      brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and a foretaste of a good
+      time coming that he put on his town clothes, after shaving and admiring
+      himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate away and drank with a
+      robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even himself at first. But the
+      sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for all he could do. As he groped
+      for the contentment which he saw around him he began to receive the jokes
+      with counterfeit mirth. Memories took the place of anticipation, and
+      through their moody shiftings he began to feel a distaste for the company
+      of his friends and a shrinking from their lively voices. He blamed them
+      for this at once. He was surprised to think he had never recognized before
+      how light a weight was Shorty; and here was Chalkeye, who knew better,
+      talking religion after two glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his
+      friends' shortcomings mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont,
+      changed at a stroke. &ldquo;I'm celebrating no Christmas with this crowd,&rdquo; said
+      the inner man; and when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their
+      hilarity he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to meet
+      a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station, buying
+      a ticket for Denver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denver!&rdquo; exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I said,&rdquo; stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; went his Excellency. &ldquo;What are you going to do there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get good and drunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm drinking champagne this trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+      moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+      after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+      inside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he says he's got maturity,&rdquo; Barker muttered. &ldquo;I've known him since
+      seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along.&rdquo; The
+      Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+      Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+      fool. &ldquo;Yes, about eight. Or six,&rdquo; said his Excellency, justifying himself
+      by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen, supreme in
+      length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling for an early
+      mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished, he had mended
+      the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and Lin's utter
+      health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon overflowed with
+      the pride of science, and over the bandages would explain the human body
+      technically to his wild-eyed and flattered patient. Thus young Lin heard
+      all about tibia, and comminuted, and other glorious new words, and when
+      sleepless would rehearse them. Then, with the bone so nearly knit that the
+      patient might leave the ward on crutches to sit each morning in Barker's
+      room as a privilege, the disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out
+      of the hospital and hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and
+      variety waited for a languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was
+      soon carried back with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's surgical rage was
+      disarmed, the patient was so forlorn over his doctor's professional
+      chagrin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?&rdquo; he had said, humbly,
+      after a new week of bed and weights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+      son-of-a-gun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+      walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all and
+      in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had missed
+      the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected thing, and
+      he in the late end of his twenties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,&rdquo; said
+      Barker. &ldquo;Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+      omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+      first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked the
+      smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin took
+      Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw a
+      saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+      should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher over
+      there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly. In
+      such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to enjoy
+      without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he looked
+      along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric lights,
+      and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried &ldquo;Shine?
+      Shine?&rdquo; at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the right to
+      get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of stopping at
+      all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a few yards, and it
+      was across the street. This one being attained and appreciated, he found
+      that he must cross back again or skip number four. At this rate he would
+      not be dining in time to see much of the theatre, and he stopped to
+      consider. It was a German place he had just quitted, and a huge light
+      poured out on him from its window, which the proprietor's father-land
+      sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone among a well-set pine forest,
+      where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots and reached upward to Santa Claus;
+      he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held in his right hand forever a foaming
+      glass, and forever in his left a string of sausages that dangled down
+      among the gnomes. With his American back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing
+      the same serious, absent face he had not changed since he ran away from
+      himself at Cheyenne, considered carefully the Hot Scotch question, and
+      which side of the road to take and stick to, while the little bootblacks
+      found him once more and cried, &ldquo;Shine? Shine?&rdquo; monotonous as snow-birds.
+      He settled to stay over here with the south-side Scotches, and the little
+      one-note song reaching his attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the
+      nearest boy, who lightly sprang away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to touch him!&rdquo; piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+      short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't hit me,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean &ldquo;I'm innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you leave him be,&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;New!&rdquo; said Billy, in scorn. &ldquo;Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+      is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a special!&rdquo; shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. &ldquo;He's got a
+      badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+      scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. &ldquo;Dare you
+      to arrest me!&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll you give me not to?&rdquo; inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+      pockets, arms akimbo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing; I've done nothing,&rdquo; announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+      last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and he,
+      too, sped into the middle of the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he claim you lifted?&rdquo; inquired the leader, with eagerness. &ldquo;Tell
+      him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!&rdquo; they
+      screamed to the special officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, &ldquo;you're poor judges of
+      a badge, you fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+      window. &ldquo;Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here,&rdquo; said he,
+      following his sprightly invention, &ldquo;he'd get arrested himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+      the last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's your idea,&rdquo; pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+      cautious steps nearer the curb, &ldquo;that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+      red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug&mdash;why,
+      I'll get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+      their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy!&rdquo; wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+      fascinated. &ldquo;Not having three feet,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, always grave
+      and slow, &ldquo;I can only give two this here job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got a big pistol and a belt!&rdquo; exulted the leader, who had
+      precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a smart boy,&rdquo; said Lin, considering him, &ldquo;and yu' find a man out
+      right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they fix
+      the boots&mdash;and a dollar goes to the quickest through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a boot,
+      with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a Colt.45 you've got,&rdquo; ventured he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+      angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm through!&rdquo; sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+      bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+      arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly referee,&rdquo; said he, forgivingly, to the leader, &ldquo;and
+      decide which of them smears is the awfulest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that saves me money,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket. &ldquo;I
+      guess you've both won.&rdquo; He handed each of them a dollar. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+      dollar for the best shine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played his
+      mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+      against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+      in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out his
+      beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher perceived,
+      and Billy no seasoned expert. &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; said Lin, stooping, &ldquo;I'll show
+      yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough to steer
+      anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with a dry
+      brush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lemme,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;I've got to learn.&rdquo; So he finished the boot his own
+      way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this event was
+      also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both parties. So
+      here was their work done, and more money in their pockets than from all
+      the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and Billy did not wish
+      for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune as soon as might be.
+      Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window, drawn by curiosity near
+      this new kind of man whose voice held them and whose remarks dropped them
+      into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted leader had been unable to go
+      away and nurse his pride alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that a secret society?&rdquo; inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+      badge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean nodded. &ldquo;Turruble,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a Wells &amp; Fargo detective,&rdquo; asserted the leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play your harp,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a&mdash;a desperaydo?&rdquo; whispered Towhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my!&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean, sadly; &ldquo;what has our Jack been readin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a cattle-man!&rdquo; cried Billy. &ldquo;I seen his heels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; said the discovered puncher, with approval. &ldquo;You'll do. But
+      I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to do
+      this night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&mdash;are&mdash;sworn&mdash;don't yu' jump, now, and give me away&mdash;sworn&mdash;to&mdash;blow
+      off three bootblacks to a dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, pshaw!&rdquo; They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up&mdash;for I
+      have it to do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+      Cant'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't waste my time on such smart boys,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, rising lazily
+      to his full height from the window-sill. &ldquo;I am goin' somewhere to find
+      boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+      they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+      followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+      window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+      stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+      broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few remarks.
+      He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that would have
+      led to conversation under almost any circumstances save these; but the
+      minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole state of things for
+      them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr. McLean in silence, at a
+      wary interval, and with their mouths, during most of the journey, open.
+      The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk, and the unusual dollars,
+      wakened wide their bent for the unexpected, their street affinity for the
+      spur of the moment; they believed slimly in the turkey part of it, but
+      what this man might do next, to be there when he did it, and not to be
+      trapped, kept their wits jumping deliciously; so when they saw him stop,
+      they stopped instantly too, ten feet out of reach. This was Denver's most
+      civilized restaurant&mdash;that one which Mr. McLean had remembered, with
+      foreign dishes and private rooms, where he had promised himself, among
+      other things, champagne. Mr. McLean had never been inside it, but heard a
+      tale from a friend; and now he caught a sudden sight of people among
+      geraniums, with plumes and white shirt-fronts, very elegant. It must have
+      been several minutes that he stood contemplating the entrance and the
+      luxurious couples who went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plumb French!&rdquo; he observed at length; and then, &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; in a key less
+      confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. &ldquo;They're
+      eatin' patty de parley-voo in there,&rdquo; he muttered, and the three
+      bootblacks came beside him. &ldquo;Say, fellows,&rdquo; said Lin, confidingly, &ldquo;I
+      wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm after
+      a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a fit.
+      What do yu' say, boys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you come along with us&mdash;we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+      there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose yer.&rdquo;
+       So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they clustered
+      about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started obediently,
+      and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christmas is comin' now, sure,&rdquo; said Lin, grinning to himself. &ldquo;It ain't
+      exactly what I figured on.&rdquo; It was the first time he had laughed since
+      Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with the new
+      warmth in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+      suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they went
+      along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+      Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and then
+      stole at him a doubtful look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+      presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+      precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and the
+      oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and several
+      choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient; and to
+      witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket and its
+      wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the guests a
+      transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as frankly
+      ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all grew
+      fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr. McLean
+      stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a cigarette?&rdquo; said the leader, over his pie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank yu',&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me.&rdquo; He had devised
+      a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chewin's no good at meals,&rdquo; continued the boy. &ldquo;Don't you use tobaccer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Onced in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader spat brightly. &ldquo;He ain't learned yet,&rdquo; said he, slanting his
+      elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. &ldquo;But beer, now&mdash;I
+      never seen anything in it.&rdquo; He and Towhead soon left Billy and his callow
+      profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that silenced him,
+      and set him listening with all his admiring young might. Nor did Mr.
+      McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this knowledge, which
+      seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be goshed,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+      streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now.&rdquo; But now
+      the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive apprenticeship.
+      &ldquo;Hello, boys!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that theatre's got a big start on us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+      topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+      and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. &ldquo;This man here will look out
+      for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the
+      highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+      icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+      effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced so
+      helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain Grant had
+      been tracking their father all over the equator and other scenic spots,
+      and now the north pole was about to impale them. The Captain's youngest
+      child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a sudden motion, loudly
+      shouted, &ldquo;Sister, the ice is closing in!&rdquo; and she replied, chastely, &ldquo;Then
+      let us pray.&rdquo; It was a superb tableau: the ice split, and the sun rose and
+      joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop fell, and male Denver, wrung
+      to its religious deeps, went out to the rum-shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+      applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+      Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+      south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+      lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out in
+      him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+      unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think this is splendid?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Splendid,&rdquo; Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humming,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, young fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it must be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to do
+      what she wanted him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that boat,
+      and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends feel bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly expect they would,&rdquo; replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+      mindful of Billy, &ldquo;except there wasn't nothin' else they could think of,&rdquo;
+       he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+      off with a pole. Wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Butted her like a ram,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+      a-going to, an' he&mdash;I think he is a flubdub anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet he is!&rdquo; said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+      guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his knees.
+      An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them putting up
+      any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an' I says, 'Dare
+      you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing, an' I'd not pray
+      for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you pray much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Lin, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell. 'You
+      lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard the
+      first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that mad! But
+      I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' must have felt like a millionaire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+      saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked by
+      her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any time.
+      Lemme see your pistol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;After this show is through I'll put it on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest? Silver-tips?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O-h! I never shot a bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd ought to try it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to see
+      you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?&rdquo; Billy
+      had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+      it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy. As
+      with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he met&mdash;the
+      few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite play for
+      him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+      gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. &ldquo;Laramie!&rdquo; said he, almost
+      shouting it. &ldquo;Yu'&mdash;yu'&mdash;is your name Lusk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. &ldquo;You're not going to take me
+      home?&rdquo; he piteously wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven and heavens!&rdquo; murmured Lin McLean. &ldquo;So you're her kid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+      length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by a
+      brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+      aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+      little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+      in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the boy,
+      and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+      dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+      that should restore the perished confidence. &ldquo;Why did yu' lead him off?&rdquo;
+       he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know; but
+      as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and more
+      sorrowful. &ldquo;I just hate him to think that of me,&rdquo; he reflected. The
+      curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they should
+      all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain Grant grew
+      hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin sat saying to
+      himself a number of contradictions. &ldquo;He's nothing to me; what's any of
+      them to me?&rdquo; Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he restated the facts of
+      the past. &ldquo;Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before she'd ever laid eyes on
+      me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never even my step-kid.&rdquo; The
+      past, however, brought no guidance. &ldquo;Lord, what's the thing to do about
+      this? If I had any home&mdash;This is a stinkin' world in some respects,&rdquo;
+       said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the chair beneath which
+      the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband. They took it for emotion
+      over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and their backs shook. Presently
+      each turned, and saw the singular man with untamed, wide-open eyes
+      glowering at the stage, and both backs shook again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more his hand was laid on Billy. &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; The boy glanced at him, and
+      quickly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me, and listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy swervingly obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+      Are yu' listenin' good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: &ldquo;You've got no call to
+      believe what I say to yu'&mdash;yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
+      So I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I saw
+      yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw all I
+      want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If yu' happen
+      to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come around to
+      Smith's Palace&mdash;that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?&mdash;and if
+      yu' don't come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night
+      I'm liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
+      to yourself. I've appreciated your company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds in
+      it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. &ldquo;It's a lost boy&mdash;a
+      runaway,&rdquo; he told the clerk. &ldquo;He'll not be extra clean, I expect, if he
+      does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut out
+      to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+      walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+      minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+      Pike's Peak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention, came
+      stepping along. &ldquo;I'm not a-going back to Laramie,&rdquo; he stated, warningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+      good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner&mdash;I'm dead sleepy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O-h!&rdquo; Billy stood blank. &ldquo;I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+      lemme black your boots in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not sure my train don't go too early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do yu' sleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to
+      hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt round
+      his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders outside the
+      accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did it ever kill a man?&rdquo; asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+      killin' me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+      they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen.&rdquo; He brought out the
+      relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. &ldquo;I foun' it myself,
+      camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+      but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+      she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's Kelley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's how
+      she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran then.
+      An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her spell&mdash;an'
+      father can't stop her, an' I&mdash;ah, I was sick of it! She's lamed me up
+      twice beating me&mdash;an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless my
+      mother!' a-getting up and a-going to bed&mdash;he's a flubdub! An' so I
+      cleared out. But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father&mdash;an'
+      you. I'll do it now if you say it's any sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. &ldquo;Don't yu' do it now,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't like mother,&rdquo; Billy continued. &ldquo;You can keep that.&rdquo; He came
+      to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside him. &ldquo;Do
+      you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five kinds&mdash;sage-hen,
+      an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more kinds harder&mdash;but I
+      couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought the magpie's, though. D'
+      you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you stay to-morrow an' I'll show you
+      that en' some other things I got the engine-man lets me keep there, for
+      there's boys that would steal an egg. An' I could take you where we could
+      fire that pistol. Bet you don't know what that is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were things
+      that rattled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean gave it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with the
+      engine-man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+      first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+      but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience made
+      him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare his
+      little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for the
+      child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+      dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+      inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+      hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+      in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man held
+      him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion that Billy
+      would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him, suggesting that
+      bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it was, rose and
+      undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The arms and legs
+      seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred conveniently; and
+      directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small frame burrowed down,
+      without the opening of an eye or a change in the breathing. Lin stood some
+      time by the bedside, with his eyes on the long, curling lashes and the
+      curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the door of the room, and at
+      himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and kissed Billy on the forehead,
+      and, rising from that, gave himself a hangdog stare in the mirror, and
+      soon in his own bed was sleeping the sound sleep of health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering with
+      his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became slowly
+      aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and he waked
+      wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room filled with
+      the bells and the sun of the winter's day. &ldquo;Where have I struck now?&rdquo; he
+      inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his mind, he raised
+      himself on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're awful late,&rdquo; said Responsibility. &ldquo;But I weren't a-going without
+      telling you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go?&rdquo; exclaimed Lin. &ldquo;Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+      breakfast alone?&rdquo; The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+      Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more than
+      he could do!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay&mdash;why, you
+      said you was a-going by the early train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the durned thing's got away on me,&rdquo; said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+      the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I hadn't a-promised them&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're a-going to have fun to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+      he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just as
+      leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived here.
+      Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?&rdquo; inquired the artful McLean.
+      &ldquo;That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty minutes! If they'd wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought to
+      waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+      engagements, yu' see&mdash;for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+      treat a man that way now, could he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course he couldn't,&rdquo; said Billy, brightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas, that
+      only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's Billy?'
+      They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll explain to
+      us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy with
+      a convincing eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; said Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out of
+      Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now, Bill,
+      what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just you and
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like that,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Is it all day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinkin' of all day,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I'll not make yu' do anything yu'd
+      rather not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they can smoke without me,&rdquo; said Billy, with sudden acrimony. &ldquo;I'll
+      see 'em to-morro'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; cried Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell them
+      to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself, tying
+      his scarf with great care. &ldquo;Wished I'd a clean shirt,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But I
+      don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good move.&rdquo; He
+      picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was particular to store
+      them in his safest pocket. &ldquo;I ain't sure whether you're crazy or not,&rdquo;
+       said he to the man in the looking-glass. &ldquo;I ain't never been sure.&rdquo; And he
+      slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+      tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+      or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+      breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+      Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+      pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+      the bill of fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to see you often,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'll come and see you if you don't
+      live too far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the trouble,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;I do. Awful far.&rdquo; He stared
+      out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+      write?&rdquo; &ldquo;What's that? Can I write? Oh yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney, Nebraska,
+      an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake&mdash;that's the finest town except
+      Denver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to, yet
+      goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable signs
+      of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+      interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+      they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+      the bill paid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+      stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from their
+      peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over the
+      city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+      buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+      presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells broke
+      out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you like music?&rdquo; inquired Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting, orderly
+      yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of Christmas
+      came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day, possessor of his
+      own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort of friendly
+      challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think we could go in here?&rdquo; Billy asked. A church door was
+      open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. &ldquo;They've good
+      music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been in
+      lots of times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+      to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+      unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep in
+      listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent imitation
+      of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain especially reached
+      their understandings, and when for the fourth time &ldquo;Shout the glad
+      tidings, exultingly sing,&rdquo; pealed forth and ceased, both the delighted
+      faces fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you wish there was more?&rdquo; Billy whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish there was a hundred verses,&rdquo; answered Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between them
+      they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin's eyes
+      roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their evergreen, the
+      flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold. &ldquo;'Peace, good-will
+      towards men,'&rdquo; he read. &ldquo;That's so. Peace and good-will. Yes, that's so. I
+      expect they got that somewheres in the Bible. It's awful good, and you'd
+      never think of it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. &ldquo;This is
+      the hymn we have now,&rdquo; she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+      took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the book
+      together, dutifully reading the words:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it, until
+      he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the concluding
+      ones:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+      second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned his
+      face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has reasons
+      which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but when the
+      service was over and he came out, he repeated again, &ldquo;'Peace and
+      good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if he'll
+      preach on them words I'll be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?&rdquo; asked Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses. Why,
+      we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among the
+      foothills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+      open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+      was walked off his young heels&mdash;a truth he learned complete in one
+      horrid moment, and battled to conceal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lame!&rdquo; he echoed, angrily. &ldquo;I ain't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said Lin, after the next ten steps. &ldquo;You are, and both feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden. &ldquo;I'm
+      played out myself,&rdquo; he said, sitting in the hotel and looking lugubriously
+      at Billy on a bed. &ldquo;And I ain't fit to have charge of a hog.&rdquo; He came and
+      put his hand on the boy's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sick,&rdquo; said the cripple. &ldquo;I tell you I'm bully. You wait an' see
+      me eat dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+      knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription and
+      most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of vigil,
+      while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed, better
+      and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't work quick to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I guess one day won't lose
+      me my trade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d' yu' mean?&rdquo; asked Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has theirs,
+      an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher an' lots,
+      an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for nothing. I
+      wished you lived in Denver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+      any of the outfit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I'm doing first-rate,&rdquo; said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+      which Mr. McLean now burst. &ldquo;An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+      at any other job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see that engine-man,&rdquo; muttered Lin. &ldquo;I don't like your smokin'
+      friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smart's nothin',&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot,&rdquo; pursued Billy, engagingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet he has!&rdquo; growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+      aback at his language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+      grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+      talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+      think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched and
+      shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through a scene
+      in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and forgiveness, and
+      intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The kid
+      would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him there, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+      corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular man,
+      with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that week
+      noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little boy
+      walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed as
+      happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a word,
+      and his face was serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+      horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. &ldquo;Have a good
+      drunk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed my mind,&rdquo; said Lin, grinning. &ldquo;Proves I've got one. Struck
+      Christmas all right, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's your friend?&rdquo; inquired his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+      to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at Sunk
+      Creek&mdash;why, I'll fix it somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+      plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sufferin Moses!&rdquo; remarked his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging
+      through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue
+      coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a little
+      island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two hours it
+      had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across the huge
+      dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating, imperceptible
+      miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for its slow pillar
+      of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's stainless sky.
+      Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other buildings stood out
+      plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks arranged and
+      forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the sameness of the
+      lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant rider, till,
+      suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've caved!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; I cried, thus awakened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the fool company,&rdquo; said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+      &ldquo;They've shed their haughtiness,&rdquo; he added, confidingly, as if I must know
+      all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did they learn that wisdom?&rdquo; I asked, not knowing in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Experience,&rdquo; he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+      passed); &ldquo;nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known more
+      of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I waked the
+      pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its haughtiness.
+      I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for so spun-out a
+      time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion of arrival had
+      evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed employment for my
+      otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the railroad company;
+      certainly something large had happened. Even as I dismounted at the
+      platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the station, and, at
+      once remarking, &ldquo;They're going to leave us alone,&rdquo; sprang on his horse and
+      galloped to the corrals down the line, where some cattle were being loaded
+      into a train. I went inside for my mail, and here were four more
+      cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had got a letter away from him,
+      and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate the jests of these
+      rollicking people. &ldquo;Read it!&rdquo; they said to me; and I did read the private
+      document, and learned that the railroad was going to waive its right to
+      enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ's good feeling.
+      &ldquo;Nothing more,&rdquo; the letter ran, &ldquo;will be done about the initial outrage or
+      the subsequent vandalisms. We shall pass over our wasted outlay in the
+      hope that a policy of friendship will prove our genuine desire to benefit
+      that section.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Initial outrage,'&rdquo; quoted one of the agent' large playmates. &ldquo;Ain't they
+      furgivin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+      deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+      cow-catcher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+      label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+      sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes,&rdquo; he drawled judicially, &ldquo;I'd be mad at that.
+      But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why, your
+      words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant.&rdquo; He took the
+      paper from me, and read, sardonically: &ldquo;'Subsequent vandalisms... wasted
+      outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the cattle. Saves
+      the poor things walking so far to the other railroad 'Policy of
+      friendship... genuine desire'&mdash;oh mouth-wash!&rdquo; And, shaking his bold,
+      clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of the agent.
+      &ldquo;Tubercle,&rdquo; said he (this was their name for the agent, who had told all
+      of us about his lungs), &ldquo;it ain't your fault we saw their fine letter.
+      They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't bother us any
+      more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late over this joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit the
+      vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to frankness,
+      and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its opposite affects
+      them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think of their late
+      sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box painted &ldquo;Hotel
+      Brunswick&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;hotel&rdquo; in small italics and &ldquo;Brunswick&rdquo; in enormous
+      capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+      and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+      challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the line
+      in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well known;
+      but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant young
+      cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by her to
+      see about supper and lodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+      beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+      myself. There were my saddle-blankets&mdash;rather wet; or Lin McLean
+      might ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the
+      corrals I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I
+      trusted and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several
+      empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these
+      freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by
+      three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking
+      through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But
+      with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until
+      five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door,
+      where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell
+      of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend
+      the remaining minutes in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was expecting you,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;Well, if I haven't frightened him!&rdquo;
+       She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; she
+      explained, &ldquo;I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side are you going
+      to butter your bread this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had smelt it?&rdquo; said I, still cloudy with surprise. &ldquo;Yes.
+      Unquestionably. Very rancid.&rdquo; She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+      fellowship in her tone, said, &ldquo;I was going to warn you&mdash;&rdquo; when
+      suddenly, down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. &ldquo;Oh,
+      dear!&rdquo; she cried, starting up. &ldquo;There's trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not trouble,&rdquo; I assured her. &ldquo;Too many are firing at once to be in
+      earnest. And you would be safe here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we are
+      respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah yondah.
+      Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home.&rdquo; The words
+      &ldquo;Louisville and Nashville&rdquo; spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unescorted all that way!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it awful?&rdquo; said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing the
+      pistol she carried. &ldquo;But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+      suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?&rdquo; And she
+      eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why New York?&rdquo; I demanded. &ldquo;Guess again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she debated, &ldquo;well, cowboy clothes and city language&mdash;he's
+      English!&rdquo; she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+      to herself, reprovingly, &ldquo;If I'm not acting rude!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said I, rather familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so free
+      with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you&mdash;the hat and
+      everything&mdash;I took you&mdash;You see I've always been that used to
+      talking to&mdash;to folks around!&rdquo; Her bright face saddened, memories
+      evidently rose before her, and her eyes grew distant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wished to say, &ldquo;Treat me as 'folks around,'&rdquo; but this tall country girl
+      had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not &ldquo;folks around,&rdquo; she
+      had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+      there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+      comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+      dark as to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,&rdquo; she resumed, &ldquo;and never as far as
+      twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+      scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got me all wrong,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I'm not English; I'm not New York. I
+      am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+      line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you
+      say United States, you mean United Kentucky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever!&rdquo; said she, staring at what was Greek to her&mdash;as it is
+      to most Americans. &ldquo;And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+      were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since&mdash;not
+      since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you,
+      you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd travel my money's length to meet her!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wave of pain crossed her face. &ldquo;Nate didn't know,&rdquo; she said then,
+      lightly. &ldquo;You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+      writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+      Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+      forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage,&rdquo; continued the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'll have your company on a weary road,&rdquo; said I; for my journey was
+      now to that part of the cattle country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Buffalo?&rdquo; she said, quickly. &ldquo;Then maybe you&mdash;maybe&mdash;My
+      brother is Nate Buckner.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;Then you're not acquainted with
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may have seen him,&rdquo; I answered, slowly. &ldquo;But faces and names out here
+      come and go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+      waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+      border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been sorry,
+      for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of the
+      sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and daring
+      skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart; but his
+      sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely years, and
+      to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell the
+      desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the stage
+      went soon after supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now isn't that a bother?&rdquo; said she, when I answered that it did not start
+      till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo;
+       she continued, briskly; &ldquo;I'm used to things. I'll just sit up somewhere.
+      Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure all that
+      shooting's only jollification?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certain,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I'll go and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They always will have their fun,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I hate to have a poor
+      boy get hurt&mdash;even him deserving it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They use pistols instead of fire-crackers,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;But you must never
+      sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you're real kind!&rdquo; she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+      wondering what I ought to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once&mdash;a
+      sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of
+      its name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail after
+      rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly during the
+      constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point these
+      unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp Separation
+      it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway man afford
+      time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless; and with
+      the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike result&mdash;Separ.
+      Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large almost as the
+      hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank and steam-pump,
+      and a section-house with three trees before it composed the north side.
+      South of the track were no trees. There was one long siding by the corrals
+      and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods
+      were for sale, a shed where you might get your horse shod, a wire fence
+      that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage
+      stable, and the little station&mdash;some seven shanties all told. Between
+      them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through
+      their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads
+      on a great string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string,
+      one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night.
+      Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of
+      sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the
+      continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed
+      many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande
+      similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds
+      hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous
+      young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot them
+      off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of the
+      agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin
+      with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to
+      telegraph for some additional cars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dead on to you!&rdquo; squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight of
+      them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought it was
+      a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the water-tank,
+      while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind the railing
+      that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some fifteen
+      strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to an
+      understanding, and the message was written and paid for and comfortably
+      despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame habits, sent for
+      the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise inappropriate air. He
+      had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious reader of our comic
+      weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the Virginian had reminded
+      him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money in the safe, he explained
+      to them, and this was a hard old country, wasn't it? and did they like
+      good whiskey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about
+      the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their round-up
+      grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode out, not
+      angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them should be so
+      tactless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we don't get him used to us,&rdquo; observed the Virginian, &ldquo;he and his
+      pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it. The
+      news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater, and
+      playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols
+      round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs improved, and he
+      came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand. But the
+      company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated,
+      which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of
+      authority began to invest Separ. Now what should authority do upon these
+      free plains, this wilderness of do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the
+      air was like inebriation? The large, headlong children who swept in from
+      the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm until
+      they found themselves resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the
+      cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they
+      had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his
+      death accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five
+      minutes. They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them
+      forever from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things
+      must be endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how
+      wrong the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon
+      Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for
+      example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would be
+      early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner. To
+      arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made
+      the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the
+      corrals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small, bold voice hailed me. &ldquo;Hello, you!&rdquo; it said; and here was Billy
+      Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick,
+      helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you were at school,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, school's quit,&rdquo; returned Billy, and changed the subject. &ldquo;Say, Lin's
+      hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with the
+      outfit.&rdquo; And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+      reminded him of politics. &ldquo;Wall Street,&rdquo; he was explaining to the agent,
+      &ldquo;has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+      along to Chicago. We want&mdash;&rdquo; Here he noticed me and, dragging his
+      gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean,&rdquo; simpered the agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin fixed his eye on the man. &ldquo;And you don't know it now,&rdquo; said he. Then
+      he removed his eye. &ldquo;Let's grub,&rdquo; he added to me. My friend did not walk
+      to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. &ldquo;Billy is
+      a good kid,&rdquo; he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds
+      in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter
+      dwelling with him, heavy and real. &ldquo;He's dead stuck on being a
+      cow-puncher,&rdquo; he presently said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't want to wait that long,&rdquo; Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+      &ldquo;And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+      The living will be scattered, and the dead&mdash;well, they'll be all
+      right. Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like
+      nets do the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more
+      cow-punchers,&rdquo; stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me
+      sad, though I know that progress cannot spare land and water for such
+      things. &ldquo;But Billy,&rdquo; Lin resumed, &ldquo;has agreed to school again when it
+      starts up in the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to.&rdquo;
+       Affection crept anew over the cow-puncher's face. &ldquo;He can learn books with
+      the quickest when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd
+      ought to have a regular mother till&mdash;till I can do for him, yu' know.
+      It's onwholesome him seeing and hearing the boys&mdash;and me, and me when
+      I forget!&mdash;but shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough
+      dropped and deserted. But when I found him the little calf could run and
+      notice like everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should hate your contract, Lin,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Adopting's a touch-and-go
+      business even when a man has a home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was mine.
+      I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got him.
+      He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and then, but Lord!
+      his badness is all right&mdash;not sneaky. I'll take him hunting next
+      month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school.
+      Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man foreman&mdash;and
+      he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's asking one hard enough,&rdquo; said I, digressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting&mdash;&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, and his
+      wide-open, hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly
+      looking at me again, he said: &ldquo;Don't you get off any more truck about
+      eldest son and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now&mdash;not
+      that I care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe
+      he'd not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set on&mdash;well&mdash;he
+      didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and I'm going to
+      make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him, if I can. Now
+      you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?&rdquo; His forehead was moist over getting the
+      thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed shortly. &ldquo;She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+      you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here&rdquo; (Lin
+      laid his hand on my shoulder), &ldquo;if you can't expect a good time for
+      yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason, can't
+      yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his hand
+      off my shoulder); &ldquo;I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met last. I
+      guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself&mdash;Why,
+      there's a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That there is!&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;And certainly the world owes her a better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a fine-looker,&rdquo; interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+      attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+      Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered &ldquo;Supper!&rdquo; with a
+      shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;let's hurry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+      at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+      sister's devoted journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nate Buckner!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Him with a decent sister!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the other way round,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Her with him for a brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He goes to the penitentiary this week,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;He had no more cash to
+      stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his sister
+      could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved time and
+      money. How did she act when yu' told her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've not told her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+      better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her&mdash;no, sir; it's not
+      right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+      would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+      against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+      gently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death's different,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a shaved
+      head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd been just
+      shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk for
+      thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick as the stage
+      pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be down ahead of
+      the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd around
+      staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that. If you don't
+      feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself.&rdquo; And Mr. McLean took
+      the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+      chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+      that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at
+      a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered
+      away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted
+      no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and
+      many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking at
+      her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and
+      went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed
+      the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the
+      invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a
+      disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have
+      never been quite sure what&mdash;perhaps reversion to the native animal
+      absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest
+      he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork.
+      Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped
+      his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that, eyed
+      him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength of the
+      butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate, the
+      table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's eye, now relieved the general
+      silence by observing, chattily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's too rich for you,&rdquo; croaked the enraged proprietor, &ldquo;use
+      axle-dope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve the
+      decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+      sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+      boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin, to
+      me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying, in
+      his Texas idiom,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have butter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on &ldquo;butter&rdquo; cracked an
+      octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+      shake her head at the plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. &ldquo;She wouldn't choose for
+      none,&rdquo; he said to the youth, with appalling calm. &ldquo;Thank yu' most to
+      death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess,&rdquo; fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, &ldquo;it would go slicker
+      rubbed outside than swallered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to know anything,&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean. &ldquo;What toy-shop did
+      you escape from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wind him up! Wind him up!&rdquo; said the proprietor, sticking his head in from
+      the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?&rdquo; screamed the boy, furiously.
+      &ldquo;Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!&rdquo; And
+      he flounced out with his young boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's hiring him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The C. Y. outfit,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-circle L.,&rdquo; a third corrected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seen one like him onced,&rdquo; said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+      his chair. &ldquo;Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!&rdquo;
+       And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also silently
+      dispersed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+      talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+      smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+      himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+      corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+      the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+      ceremony, when she began at once, &ldquo;You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+      have my laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, m'm,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;don't mention it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that boy, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, please don't! Why&mdash;why&mdash;you were every bit as bad!&rdquo; Miss
+      Buckner pealed out, joyously. &ldquo;It was the two of you. Oh dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. &ldquo;I had no&mdash;I didn't go to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well, and&mdash;I
+      know I ought to behave better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, yu' oughtn't!&rdquo; said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+      deprecation, &ldquo;You'll think us plumb ignorant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know enough to be kind to folks,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd like to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the only thing makes the world go round!&rdquo; she declared, with an
+      emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she caught
+      herself up, and said gayly to me, &ldquo;And where's that house you were going
+      to build for a lone girl to sleep in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am no&mdash;tenderfoot, don't you call them?&rdquo; She whipped out her
+      pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+      glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+      behind it. &ldquo;My!&rdquo; he said, at length, almost in a whisper, &ldquo;she's got the
+      drop on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours,&rdquo; said Miss Buckner.
+      &ldquo;But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards.&rdquo; And she
+      handed it to him for inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. &ldquo;My!&rdquo; he
+      murmured again. &ldquo;Why, shucks!&rdquo; He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+      rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+      unconscious thumb. &ldquo;You hold it just as steady as I could,&rdquo; he said with
+      pride, and added, insinuatingly, &ldquo;I could learn yu' the professional drop
+      in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd not trade, though,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;for all your flattery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will yu' trade?&rdquo; pounced Lin. &ldquo;Won't yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like me
+      ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows the brands, too!&rdquo; cried Lin, in ecstasy. &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, &ldquo;we're losing time
+      right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+      lady, and I'll bring her along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the office.
+      The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held the ticket
+      and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and room for
+      the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the sitting,
+      dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove in a
+      pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the
+      company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his
+      room to rights. But we need not have hurried ourselves. Mr. McLean was so
+      long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and
+      talking with her, while fifty yards away skulked poor Texas, alone. This
+      boy's name was, like himself, of the somewhat unexpected order, being
+      Manassas Donohoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and on
+      seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, &ldquo;Did he know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did know!&rdquo; she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+      continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, &ldquo;I reckon you don't like
+      to have to tell folks bad news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was I that now hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to a strange girl, anyway!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Well, now I have good news to
+      tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you knew
+      about poor Nate, for that's the reason&mdash;Of course those things can't
+      be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about this
+      world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left home five
+      years ago. And I am twenty-three&mdash;old enough to be Nate's
+      grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize bad
+      companions when they came around. See that!&rdquo; She showed me a paper, taking
+      it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a pardon signed
+      by Governor Barker. &ldquo;And the Governor has let me carry it to Nate myself.
+      He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The Governor was real
+      kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must have a mustache by
+      now?&rdquo; said she to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, &ldquo;he has got a
+      mustache all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll be glad to see you,&rdquo; said I, for something to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?&rdquo; she asked Lin,
+      turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It was
+      plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I was
+      already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse to tell
+      her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that &ldquo;we&rdquo; had
+      before us, and that lay between her and Nate. &ldquo;We would be four&mdash;herself,
+      Lin, myself, and the boy Billy.&rdquo; Was Billy the one at supper? Oh no; just
+      Billy Lusk, of Laramie. &ldquo;He's a kid I'm taking up the country,&rdquo; Lin
+      explained. &ldquo;Ain't you most tuckered out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, me!&rdquo; she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing Lin
+      should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep in the
+      agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back into the
+      outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness she had
+      shown me before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out!&rdquo; she cried, laughing. &ldquo;Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+      you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you ever
+      so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was&mdash;a
+      cowboy!&rdquo; And she glanced at Lin. &ldquo;They're calling forty-seven,&rdquo; she added
+      to the agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's me,&rdquo; he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. &ldquo;So you're
+      one of us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;How in the world do you
+      know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+      right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them from
+      his room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?&rdquo; inquired the proud and smiling
+      McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+      coming through on a special engine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't say it out loud!&rdquo; quavered the agent, as the machine clicked
+      its news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' needn't be scared of a girl,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Another sheriff! So they're
+      not quit bothering us yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a sheriff
+      sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas, said to be at
+      the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations beyond, and the
+      engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here was no molesting of
+      Separ's liberties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+      corrals, &ldquo;the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+      may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here,&rdquo; he urged to the
+      girl. But she would not. &ldquo;Well, then, we must rustle some other private
+      place for you. How's the section-house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rank,&rdquo; said the agent, &ldquo;since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+      has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An empty?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Is there a clean one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've sure never done that?&rdquo; Lin burst out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're scandalized,&rdquo; said she, punishing him instantly. &ldquo;I reckon it
+      does take a decent girl to shock you.&rdquo; And while she stood laughing at him
+      with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no offence.
+      &ldquo;Why, to be sure you didn't!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I do enjoy you real
+      thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, m'm,&rdquo; protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to addressing
+      her as &ldquo;ma'am,&rdquo; &ldquo;we ain't used&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+      never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+      never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+      lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+      things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant no
+      offense,&rdquo; she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+      protector, &ldquo;because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+      about an empty. That will be rich&mdash;if I can have the door shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+      with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+       while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+      our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+      the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+      back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: &ldquo;Her name's Jessamine. She told
+      me. Don't yu' like that name?&rdquo; So I answered him, &ldquo;Yes, very much,&rdquo;
+       thinking that some larger flower&mdash;but still a flower&mdash;might have
+      been more apt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody seems to have slept in these,&rdquo; said she, stepping down; and on
+      learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+      &ldquo;What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if you
+      had a Louavull an' Nashvull car,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Twould seem like my old
+      Kentucky home!&rdquo; And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held the lamp
+      up to read the car's lettering. &ldquo;'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's a way-off
+      stranger! I reckon they're all strange.&rdquo; She went along the train with her
+      lamp. &ldquo;Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is rich! Nate will
+      laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's a little nearer my
+      country. What time does the stage start? Porter, please wake 'C., B. and
+      Q.' at six, sharp,&rdquo; said she to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings&mdash;their
+      doings&mdash;with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can
+      ever happen again, I know; for it's all gone&mdash;settled, sobered, and
+      gone. And whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup, how
+      I thank my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in time
+      for!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a good
+      shake-down&mdash;clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+      would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+      not resist&mdash;what do you suppose?&mdash;a looking-glass for next
+      morning! And we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to
+      her, she said, in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by
+      all means, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety
+      better so; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began
+      spreading straw and blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and
+      long, and its tone rose in pitch as it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get him to run right to the corrals,&rdquo; said the agent, &ldquo;so the
+      sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll convince 'em he is,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Stop him here, or let him go
+      through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails of the
+      main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the headlight grew
+      down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at the corrals
+      chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the coming engine
+      heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met and mixed with
+      the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached together like a
+      sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars, where I heard Lin
+      ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could see the agent running
+      about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal with as much coherence as a
+      chicken with its head off. I had very short space for wonder or alarm. The
+      edge of one of my freight-cars glowed suddenly with the imminent
+      headlight, and galloping shots invaded the place. The horsemen flew by,
+      overreaching, and leaning back and lugging against their impetus. They
+      passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust coiled up thick from the dark
+      ground and luminously unfolded across the glare of the sharp-halted
+      locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered around it where it stood by
+      our cars, its air-brake pumping deep breaths, and the internal steam
+      humming through its bowels; and I came out in time to see Billy Lusk climb
+      its front with callow, enterprising shouts. That was child's play; and the
+      universal yell now raised by the horsemen was their child's play too; but
+      the whole thing could so precipitately reel into the fatal that my
+      thoughts stopped. I could only look when I saw that they had somehow
+      recognized the man on the engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their
+      horses and were making boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean,
+      neither boisterous nor joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his
+      pistol drawn, to keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on
+      the lever, the fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and
+      descended and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a
+      good-natured eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his
+      errand, when some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to
+      get down and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he
+      named the sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and
+      the new yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations,
+      they swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
+      step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in this
+      silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and they all
+      looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there on the
+      threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind her, and
+      touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine Buckner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you gentlemen do me a favor?&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Strangers, maybe, have no
+      right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For I'm
+      real sleepy!&rdquo; She smiled as she brought this out. &ldquo;I've been four days and
+      nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo. You see
+      I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want boys to be
+      boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till to-morrow
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among them,
+      and that some word was passing through their groups. After the brief
+      interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their horses, while
+      the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the sheriff and
+      engineer remained as they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, lady,&rdquo; said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the others
+      kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed away to the
+      corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern chaps, passed
+      from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light in front of the
+      locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and there a faint,
+      vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing column a bold,
+      half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the doorway, and then
+      was gone again into the dimness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+      she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine moved,
+      off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an exclamation of
+      horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and, with all a parent's
+      fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely as the sheriff
+      steamed by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't a-going to chase it,&rdquo; said young Billy, struggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a mind to cowhide you,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Buckner interposed. &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;next time; if he does
+      it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that way again
+      if he lets you off?&rdquo; she asked Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Billy, looking at her with interest. &ldquo;Father 'd have cowhided
+      me anyway, I guess,&rdquo; he added, meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call him father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, father's at Laramie,&rdquo; said Billy, with disgust. &ldquo;He'd not stop for
+      your asking. Lin don't bother me much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You quit talking and step up there!&rdquo; ordered his guardian. &ldquo;Well, m'm, I
+      guess yu' can sleep good now in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+      Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride
+      together. Pleasant dreams!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+      it, remarking: &ldquo;I like her. What makes her live in a car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who took
+      him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One distant
+      whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left our car
+      open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off, when I
+      grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his stockings
+      and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then leaped down,
+      light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in expectancy; but
+      back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid into bed I asked
+      what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the
+      girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping a watch on it. &ldquo;So I gave
+      him to understand,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;that I had no objection to him amusing
+      himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed I was enough guard, and he
+      would find sleep healthier for his system.&rdquo; After this I went to sleep
+      wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought I heard some one outside,
+      and learned in the morning from Lin that the boy had not gone until the
+      time came for him to join his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised
+      that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the
+      idea of this unknown, unthanked young sentinel. &ldquo;Sleeping's a heap better
+      for them kind till they get their growth,&rdquo; was his single observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I
+      told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note that
+      young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see him upon
+      her return, to thank him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any Jack can walk around all night,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,&rdquo; observed the young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when
+      she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+      untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at
+      the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours
+      very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside her
+      to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+      further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so
+      winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+      overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+      doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not
+      prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+      Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and
+      woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and
+      counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to
+      herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at
+      me and my well-assumed slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+      sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know this road,&rdquo; piped Billy, on the box
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a
+      left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know. What
+      made Lin marry mother when father was around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+      instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld that
+      his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met her on
+      Bear Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The formidable nine-year-old pondered. &ldquo;The geography says they used to
+      have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can
+      have a lot of husbands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It don't especially depend on the place,&rdquo; remarked the driver to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; Billy went on, &ldquo;Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd had
+      a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I
+      blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss
+      Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and
+      Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and
+      I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert!
+      Say, am I Lin's, honest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy, you're not,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+      I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go. You
+      ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are, but
+      I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother take
+      'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever does. I
+      guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he does,&rdquo; said
+      Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, &ldquo;I'll quit him and skip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No danger, Bill,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would the nice lady inside please you?&rdquo; inquired the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!&rdquo; sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+      &ldquo;She's after her brother. She's all right, though,&rdquo; he added, approvingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+      manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now spoke
+      cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+      That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as
+      to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war!
+      How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to
+      Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his
+      mother's life! &ldquo;Though,&rdquo; said the driver, an easygoing cynic, &ldquo;folks with
+      lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!&rdquo; But
+      presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully
+      lifted him down and up. &ldquo;I've knowed that woman, too,&rdquo; he whispered to me.
+      &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she fooled
+      Lin into marryin' her. Come to think,&rdquo; he mused, as twilight deepened
+      around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between us,
+      &ldquo;there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't make
+      soberness for somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+      quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our
+      next change of horses &ldquo;hoped&rdquo; I would come inside, I knew she did not hope
+      very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+      brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her eyes.
+      The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks white and
+      her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me that we
+      should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold. I think she
+      was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart understood the
+      lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow puncher, standing
+      aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully and spoke never a word.
+      For a moment he looked after her with sombre emotion; but the court-house
+      and prison stood near and in sight, and, as plain as if he had said so, I
+      saw him suddenly feel she should not be stared at going up those steps; it
+      must be all alone, the pain and the joy of that reprieve! He turned away
+      with me, and after a few silent steps said, &ldquo;Wasted! all wasted!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not a fool,&rdquo; he broke in, roughly. &ldquo;You don't hope anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll start life elsewhere,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+      Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+      tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+      how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+      her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it into
+      money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have just bit
+      my head off, and&mdash;and that would sure hurt me now!&rdquo; Lin brought up
+      with a comical chuckle. &ldquo;And she went to work, and he cleared out, and no
+      more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given up
+      tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+      long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows he's
+      not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts for
+      him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York, till she got
+      in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had to go as far as
+      Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the money he stole.&rdquo; We
+      had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone into the quick little
+      river. &ldquo;She's awful strict in some ways. Thought Buffalo must be a wicked
+      place because of the shops bein' open Sunday. Now if that was all
+      Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is mostly sin. But her heart
+      is a shield for Nate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her face is as beautiful as her actions,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He whirled round and took both my shoulders. &ldquo;Come walking!&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;I
+      must talk some.&rdquo; So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+      mountains. &ldquo;I came awful near asking her in the stage,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time can't increase my feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+      with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can be
+      so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard. And
+      everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending to speak
+      of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my
+      fencing and my ditch&mdash;and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better
+      than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'd like to ask&mdash;&rdquo; I cried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask away!&rdquo; he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you&mdash;&rdquo; but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of
+      course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his
+      substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not
+      married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped,
+      for to trench here was not for me or any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, &ldquo;don't you ask about
+      the things you're meaning.&rdquo; Then his face grew radiant and rather stern.
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones
+      can't ever be bygones? But if you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;never come to look away up
+      to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you did
+      deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+      blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+      vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+      since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is not
+      true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all plants
+      need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen misery
+      deaden once kind people to everything but self&mdash;almost the saddest
+      sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of
+      happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been
+      needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have been much
+      too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and this care of
+      young Billy with which he had loaded himself. &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I will drink
+      your health and luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm healthy enough,&rdquo; said he; and we came back to the main street and
+      into the main saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d'ye, boys?&rdquo; said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. &ldquo;It's on me
+      to-day,&rdquo; he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was a
+      little drunk. &ldquo;I'm setting 'em up,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Why? Why, because&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      looked around for appreciation&mdash;&ldquo;because it's not every son-of-a-gun
+      in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important, I want you to
+      understand,&rdquo; he pursued to the cold bystanders. &ldquo;They'll have a picture of
+      me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They can't
+      do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a
+      colt,&rdquo; he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink&mdash;and
+      then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in
+      his mind. &ldquo;You're not drinking, Lin,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said McLean, &ldquo;I'm not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' never gave water the chance,&rdquo; retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+      the place without my having drunk his health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+      with the jail door scarce closed behind him. &ldquo;Folks are not going to like
+      that,&rdquo; said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel. Yet
+      the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+      company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+      told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+      get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+      for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle their
+      young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs.
+      Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working. All this
+      she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first
+      day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin
+      offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at
+      retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made
+      excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, shaven clean,
+      with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner to Jessamine
+      were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean, so that I
+      observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no jealousy!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But he comes in and kisses her, and he kisses
+      her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such oncontrollable
+      affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I expect she must
+      have some of her savings left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+      our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+      her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+      Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her; and
+      he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that dead
+      place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed some
+      regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to visit her
+      now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he spoke volubly of
+      himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of brother and sister
+      had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held himself and Billy
+      aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then merely to give me the
+      news that people here wanted no more of Nate Buckner; he would be run out
+      of the country, and respect for the sister was all that meanwhile saved
+      him. But Buckner, like so many spared criminals, seemed brazenly unaware
+      he was disgraced, and went hailing loudly any riders or drivers we met,
+      while beside him his sister sat close and straight, her stanch affection
+      and support for the world to see. For all she let appear, she might have
+      been bringing him back from some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode
+      along the travesty seemed more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and
+      darker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun draws
+      down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream comes
+      flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along the
+      margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that we saw
+      Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of light.
+      The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern masonry
+      of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and amber and
+      saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about the levels, and
+      horses were moving among the restless colts. These the brother bade his
+      sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I heard him boasting of
+      his skill&mdash;truthful boasting, to be sure. Had he been honest in his
+      dealings, the good-will that man's courage and dashing appearance beget in
+      men would have brought him more employment than he could have undertaken.
+      He told Jessamine his way of breaking a horse that few would dare, and she
+      listened eagerly. &ldquo;Do you remember when I used to hold the pony for you to
+      get on?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You always would scare me, Nate!&rdquo; And he replied,
+      fluently, Yes, yes; did she see that horse there, near the fence? He was a
+      four-year-old, an outlaw, and she would find no one had tried getting on
+      his back since he had been absent. This was the first question he asked on
+      reaching the cabin, where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider;
+      and, finding he was right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't know how to handle that horse,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I told you so. Give
+      me a rope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only was
+      their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+      riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+      cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+      been in the Buffalo saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trick is easy enough,&rdquo; said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+      liking an audience. &ldquo;You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+      this&mdash;Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+      sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the
+      mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their
+      fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+      trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+      knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+      bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the
+      rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve,
+      rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on
+      without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we
+      cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something
+      awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise to silence. The
+      horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden towards us, a
+      wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until the head sank on
+      the horse's rump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed and
+      went, leaning on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+      having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse had crushed
+      him internally. He must have become almost instantly unconscious, being
+      held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair cinch; it
+      may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world that he knew.
+      The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him home, which his
+      sister at first wished to do. &ldquo;Why, I came here to bring him home,&rdquo; she
+      said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax. Her calm, the
+      unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was surrounded
+      with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she saw her calamity
+      clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was Lin gave her what
+      she needed&mdash;the repose of his strong, silent presence. He spoke no
+      sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the burial;
+      he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said to her,
+      and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some mechanism of
+      the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell her story as she
+      would. Once I heard him say to her, with the same authority of that first
+      &ldquo;come away&rdquo;; &ldquo;Now you've had enough of the talking. Come for a walk.&rdquo;
+       Enough of the talking&mdash;as if it were a treatment! How did he think of
+      that? Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed him, and I saw the two going
+      quietly about in the meadows and along the curving brook; and that night
+      she slept well. On one only point did the cow-puncher consult me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But she
+      has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where
+      she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at him
+      to-day, for&mdash;well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.
+      But I'd like to show you my idea before going further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+      sight of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all I wanted to know,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'll fix the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far as
+      Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to hour,
+      and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and sheltering
+      trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate laid, and there
+      she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those walks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+      with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+      On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he
+      inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in
+      Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt
+      myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so. My advice to
+      him would have been ill received, and&mdash;as was soon to be made plain&mdash;would
+      have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning he and Billy were
+      gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs.
+      Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where
+      we had come for part of a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year&mdash;painful,
+      serious events&mdash;like an interview with some important person with
+      whom your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing,
+      it froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+      diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+      choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Wensday four a. m.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+      bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You will
+      confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner of
+      date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss J. Buckner
+      may prefer company for the trip being long and poor accommodations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Yours &amp;c.     L. McLEAN.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound) that
+      this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give herself to a
+      lover was distasteful to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and she
+      was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank surprise
+      at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from her lips,
+      at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as to her
+      opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us talk straight,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Do you mean that Miss Buckner says that,
+      or that you say it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the poor thing says nothing!&rdquo; exclaimed the lady. &ldquo;It's like a man
+      to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all just
+      the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to know
+      what I think of him next time we meet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy in
+      the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we did
+      not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle or
+      cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her loneliness
+      had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable roof,
+      the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in the hill
+      by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung to the
+      neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when I told
+      her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked to the
+      court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one life-memory
+      farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the receding town and
+      mountains. &ldquo;It's awful to be leaving him!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Excuse me for acting
+      so in front of you.&rdquo; With the poignant emptiness overcoming her in new
+      guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in Illinois until he had been
+      sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he must have gone with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+      come to him? But I said: &ldquo;You know you don't think it was your fault. You
+      know you would do the same again.&rdquo; She listened to me, but her eyes had no
+      interest in them. &ldquo;He never knew pain,&rdquo; I pursued, &ldquo;and he died doing the
+      thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying himself, and
+      you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk religion, but I
+      can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you for
+      saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want it&mdash;to
+      hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+      was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the wounds of
+      grief would heal and leave no sickness&mdash;perhaps no higher
+      sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+      held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+      notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+      called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers. Now
+      and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that was in
+      her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements brought us
+      to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when at last
+      Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at the
+      suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped out of
+      the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed and
+      beamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I went away without telling you goodbye!&rdquo; he began, not wisely. &ldquo;Mrs.
+      Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. &ldquo;Indeed? There was no special
+      obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lin, crestfallen. &ldquo;Yu' sure don't mean that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. &ldquo;No, neighbor, I don't mean
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neighbor!&rdquo; he exclaimed; and again, &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; much pleased. &ldquo;Now it
+      would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blamed if I understand her,&rdquo; cried Lin. &ldquo;Blamed if I do. But you're going
+      to understand me sure quick!&rdquo; He rushed inside the station, spoke sharply
+      to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that had pushed
+      him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed near bursting.
+      &ldquo;I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter, and I expect I
+      know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here.&rdquo; He took it from the less
+      hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. &ldquo;You needn't to fear.
+      Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!&rdquo; He watched it in her
+      hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a Christmas parcel he
+      wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully untie. &ldquo;Open it,&rdquo; he
+      urged again. &ldquo;Keeping me waiting this way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world does all this mean?&rdquo; cried Jessamine, stopping short at
+      the first sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've done this!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read, read!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+      written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss Buckner
+      might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she was willing
+      to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her way east, and
+      talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more than she had
+      been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she could continue
+      east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent believed the salary
+      could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to find an order for a
+      free ride to Edgeford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. &ldquo;You did do this,&rdquo; she
+      repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And I am plumb proud of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+      stopped. &ldquo;Did anybody ever!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no! oh no!&rdquo; Jessamine declared. &ldquo;Though how am I ever to thank you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By not argufying,&rdquo; Lin answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+      are crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been waiting to hear yu' say that,&rdquo; said the complacent McLean. &ldquo;I'm
+      not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an hour, and
+      I expect you'll be wanting to go on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I expect I'll go, too,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be plumb proud to have yu',&rdquo; the cow-puncher assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now,&rdquo; said Jessamine, again
+      laughing, sunny and defiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet you are!&rdquo; said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into the
+      station serenely. &ldquo;You can't get used to new ideas in a minute,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to me. &ldquo;I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,&rdquo; he
+      broke out, impetuously, &ldquo;I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When she
+      goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll you do
+      then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just knew I'd have
+      to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble inconvenient&mdash;Billy
+      here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'&mdash;but how could I let
+      her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some Blue-grass son-of-a-gun
+      back there? And I hated the fix I was in till that morning, getting up, I
+      was joshin' the Virginia man that's after Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no
+      educated lady would think of a man who talked with an African accent.
+      'It's repotted you have a Southern rival yourself,' says he, joshin' back.
+      So I said I guessed the rival would find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he.
+      'Any man with his voice broke in two halves, and one down in his stomach
+      and one up among the angels, is goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a
+      heap about his lady vigilante in the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said;
+      and I must have jumped, for they all asked where the lightning had struck.
+      And in fifteen minutes after writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh,
+      I figured things out on that ride!&rdquo; (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the
+      back.) &ldquo;Got to Separ. Got the sheriff's address&mdash;the sheriff that saw
+      her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford
+      and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said,
+      'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your
+      water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the
+      superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he
+      flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to
+      rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to
+      be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between
+      Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from
+      Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a
+      man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman
+      would be respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct
+      the business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began
+      to soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as
+      wise as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you deserve success after thinking of a thing like that!
+      You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago. By
+      eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, so she will!&rdquo; said Lin, affecting surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+      parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination of
+      check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly failed
+      to gratify her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+      dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+      something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+      supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, &ldquo;I hope I shall see
+      Mr. Donohoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Texas?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+      the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can walk round a freight-car all night,&rdquo; said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+      &ldquo;I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!&rdquo; cried out Jessamine
+      &ldquo;Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean, you
+      surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; began Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her laughter routed him. &ldquo;Maybe you didn't notice you were young,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe even
+      the girls kind o' did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's hard to beat, ain't she?&rdquo; inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him
+      waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye.
+      The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it
+      was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not
+      good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's
+      arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made herself bright
+      again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you ride any more cow-catchers,&rdquo; she warned Billy Lusk, &ldquo;or I'll
+      have to come back and look after you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't,&rdquo; shouted the
+      long-memoried nine-year-old. &ldquo;You will,&rdquo; murmured Mr. McLean, oracularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner cried
+      &ldquo;Jump!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; said he, placidly. Then he called to me, &ldquo;I'm hard to beat,
+      too!&rdquo; So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+      intention all along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that marriage again?&rdquo; said Billy, anxiously. &ldquo;He wouldn't tell me
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford,&rdquo; said the agent. &ldquo;Be
+      back to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along,&rdquo; Billy complained. And
+      Separ laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+      remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+      made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+      bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep was
+      unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town. Separ
+      lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a while. But
+      news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be sifted through
+      the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+      the Eastern States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+      to us,&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't tell him good-bye,&rdquo; said Honey Wiggin. &ldquo;Separ'll be slow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can give his successor a right hearty welcome,&rdquo; the Virginian
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; said Honey. &ldquo;Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're the
+      leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+      faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; drawled the Southerner, &ldquo;that's what I'm aiming to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+      welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean. He
+      reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+      casual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring your new wife?&rdquo; they inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; she preferred Kentucky,&rdquo; Lin said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring the old one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; she preferred Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl,&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said Mr. McLean. &ldquo;I quit at Edgeford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+      being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle had
+      gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from its
+      lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, &ldquo;You'll see her
+      to-morrow if you go in with the outfit.&rdquo; Then, looking round to make sure
+      we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket, cherishingly, a
+      little shining pistol. &ldquo;Hers,&rdquo; said he, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've exchanged,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night when
+      Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My idea,&rdquo; he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. &ldquo;See this,
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked, and there was the word &ldquo;Neighbor&rdquo; engraved on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her idea,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good one!&rdquo; I murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+      the superintendent's proposition.&rdquo; Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+      weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. &ldquo;She can beat that with mine!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed, proud and tender. &ldquo;She took four days deciding at Edgeford, and
+      I learned her to hit the ace of clubs.&rdquo; He showed me the cards they had
+      practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in a book
+      as if they were pressed flowers. &ldquo;They won't get crumpled that way,&rdquo; said
+      he; and he further showed me a tintype. &ldquo;She's got the other at Separ,&rdquo; he
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+      deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+      again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+      work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+      Kentucky. &ldquo;But how in the world,&rdquo; I asked him, &ldquo;did you persuade her to
+      stop over at Edgeford at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' mustn't forget,&rdquo; said the lover (and he blushed), &ldquo;that I had her
+      four hours alone on the train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+      day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+      so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+      He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was a
+      joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+      Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on. He
+      suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change at
+      Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We mostly take their tricks,&rdquo; observed the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, &ldquo;that's so, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+      of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of legend&mdash;more
+      egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and no serious horde
+      would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and copious howling
+      brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like rabbits&mdash;all
+      save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in there, and the
+      horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and leaped to earth&mdash;except
+      Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door stood open wide to any cool
+      breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped in foremost, hat lowering
+      over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped rooted, staring, and his mouth
+      came open slowly; his hand went feeling up for his hat, and came down with
+      it by degrees as by degrees his grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he
+      said: &ldquo;Why, excuse me, ma'am! Good-morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+      open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+      welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+      Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place, and the
+      great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging water-tank
+      shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+      itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+      removed its foolish hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+      railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have any letters, ma'am,&rdquo; said the Virginian, more inventive,
+      &ldquo;I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's.&rdquo; He knew the judge's office
+      was seventy miles from here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any for the C. Y.?&rdquo; muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+      mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+      some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+      letters ever came for these names!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no letter for any one present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, truly,&rdquo; said Jessamine behind the railing. &ldquo;For you seemed
+      real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+      please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand things
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank yu', m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she don't understand things yet,&rdquo; soliloquized the Virginian. &ldquo;Oh
+      dear, no.&rdquo; He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. &ldquo;You Lin McLean,&rdquo; said
+      he, in his gentle voice, &ldquo;you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+      mawnin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+      small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and
+      vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and
+      here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+      of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+      observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean &ldquo;'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+      for a six-shooter as ever I heard,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But she'll never have need
+      of your gun in Separ&mdash;only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while
+      she hearkens to your courtin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. &ldquo;Plumb strange,&rdquo; he
+      said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, &ldquo;how a man will
+      win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair seems black as ever,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hopes ain't so glossy any more,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Lin has done better
+      this second trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Lusk don't count,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+      clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky.&rdquo; And the Virginian
+      fell silent again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+      that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+      idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a good
+      shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+      possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They would
+      have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+      water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one or
+      another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters, and
+      brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin, more
+      original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an ace of
+      clubs. &ldquo;I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a shootin'-match,&rdquo; he
+      would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more objectionable shooting than
+      this. Texas brought her presents of game&mdash;antelope, sage-chickens&mdash;but,
+      shyness intervening, he left them outside the door, and entering, dressed
+      in all the &ldquo;Sunday&rdquo; that he had, would sit dumbly in the lady's presence.
+      I remember his emerging from one of these placid interviews straight into
+      the hands of his tormentors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she don't notice your clothes, Texas,&rdquo; said the Virginian, &ldquo;just
+      mention them to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now yer've done offended her,&rdquo; shrilled Manassas Donohoe. &ldquo;She heard
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll hear you singin' sooprano,&rdquo; said Honey Wiggin. &ldquo;It's good this
+      country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+      corrupt your morals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man,&rdquo; observed the
+      Virginian. &ldquo;Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+      found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no one.
+      Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he had gone
+      on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But more than
+      this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye to Jessamine
+      Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a wolverene-skin, a
+      hunting trophy. &ldquo;She can have it,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;I like her.&rdquo; Then he stole
+      a look at his guardian. &ldquo;If they get married and send me back to mother,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;I'll run away sure.&rdquo; So school and this old dread haunted the
+      child, while for the man, Lin the lucky, who suspected nothing of it, time
+      was ever bringing love nearer to his hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box
+      Elder, and even said she wanted chickens there; since when Mr. McLean
+      might occasionally have been seen at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard
+      fowls, feeding and cursing them with equal care. Spring would see him
+      married, he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time right!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;And I want her to know Billy some more
+      before he goes to Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Bear Creek!&rdquo; said Billy, acidly. &ldquo;Why can't I stay home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home sounds kind o' slick,&rdquo; said Lin to me. &ldquo;Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+      closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral, and
+      ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're good,
+      maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her about
+      Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+      angrily to the corral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin nudged me, laughing. &ldquo;I can rile him every time about Laramie,&rdquo; said
+      he, affectionately. &ldquo;I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store by
+      me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What do
+      yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all&mdash;right
+      after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy&mdash;Jessamine says
+      to me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about
+      her brother and her sorrow.&rdquo; Lin paused. &ldquo;And about me. I can't never tell
+      you&mdash;but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+      picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+      his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all that;
+      and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't anything
+      to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was your son and I
+      was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever gave me I
+      didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: &ldquo;I didn't
+      ask her about Laramie. So there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, kid,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, patting his head, &ldquo;yu' needn't
+      to, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to
+      the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we went
+      over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots, a
+      rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+      dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently on
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scanty room for company!&rdquo; Jessamine said. &ldquo;But we must make out this way&mdash;till
+      we have another way.&rdquo; She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face darkened. &ldquo;Do
+      you know,&rdquo; she pursued to me, &ldquo;with all those chickens Mr. McLean tells me
+      about, never a one has he thought to bring here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Livin' or dead do you want 'em?&rdquo; inquired Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!&rdquo; And we all laughed
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?&rdquo; spoke Billy, suddenly,
+      from his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to see anybody try to make you?&rdquo; exclaimed Jessamine. &ldquo;Who says
+      any such thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin did,&rdquo; said Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. &ldquo;What a way to tease him!&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought,&rdquo; said Lin the boisterous. &ldquo;I wouldn't have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come sit here, Billy,&rdquo; said Jessamine. &ldquo;Whenever he teases, you tell me,
+      and we'll make him behave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest?&rdquo; persisted Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shake hands on it,&rdquo; said Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+      you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest! Honest!&rdquo; And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either,&rdquo; stated Billy,
+      relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's simple,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right,&rdquo; repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+      looking down. &ldquo;Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy?&rdquo; whispered Jessamine. &ldquo;Then you&mdash;But his name is Lusk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course it is,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Father and mother are living in Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all straight,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;I never saw her till three
+      years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only&mdash;only&mdash;only it don't
+      come easy to tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose. &ldquo;Miss Buckner,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;he will tell you. But he will not tell
+      you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret. It
+      is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on Lin,
+      and her face remained white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+      the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to
+      sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I walked
+      about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith, ignorant she
+      was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could have told
+      Jessamine the same old story myself&mdash;or almost; but what had it to do
+      with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with something
+      left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the moon edge
+      into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow, seemingly near,
+      like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of the sage-brush
+      flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and near things, and
+      all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were in bed. Dark
+      windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the water-tank, a
+      dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx emblem, the
+      vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a door
+      creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up and
+      spoke in a half-awed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a-crying,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: &ldquo;I'm
+      sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+      sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe she's mad,&rdquo; I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+      he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the plain,
+      and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young Billy fell
+      asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he who had
+      brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him. But that
+      man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened, and it was
+      he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and stand to
+      watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the door, and,
+      coming over to me, stood looking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; I said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him gently.
+      &ldquo;Wake, son,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You and I must get to our camp now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now?&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Can't we wait till morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+      saddles on.&rdquo; As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. &ldquo;She is in
+      there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She's in there. So near.&rdquo; He looked, and turned to the
+      hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. &ldquo;I
+      understand her words,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Her words, the meaning of them. But
+      not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't
+      blame me!&rdquo; he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she
+      forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I didn't
+      intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she never
+      realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that was
+      not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long&mdash;and
+      I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she
+      says I have a wife livin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nonsense,&rdquo; I declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' mustn't say that,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+      She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+      different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+      view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+      that she's honest, and loves me true&mdash;&rdquo; His voice broke for a moment.
+      &ldquo;She said she'd wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But
+      perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+      something back of law. She said she'd wait&mdash;always. And when I took
+      it in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and
+      the chickens&mdash;well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and
+      waked Billy to clear out and quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you tell her?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+      Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, man!&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll wait
+      too&mdash;always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+      horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black,
+      brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the
+      moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear
+      radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and
+      that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature
+      was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw
+      them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted.
+      Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!&rdquo; she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+      last good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+      flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+      were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+      moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+      window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing
+      over Separ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to ask
+      questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people and
+      aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not guide
+      one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it. Now
+      except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine Buckner
+      had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she been shut
+      up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine. Had this experience been
+      hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr. McLean the friendly and
+      singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said that she was very
+      well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr. McLean had stayed
+      away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what she expected of
+      him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and &ldquo;yours sincerely and
+      always, 'Neighbor.'&rdquo; Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk&mdash;if Lin was
+      busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop quietly
+      with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and there she
+      would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not like his
+      adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would adopt
+      him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin&mdash;until the school
+      opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about
+      how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any
+      man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon&mdash;young
+      Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink&mdash;the
+      only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can write a lot quicker than Lin,&rdquo; said Billy, upon arriving. &ldquo;He was
+      fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling in
+      our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to the
+      cabin for my clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say!&rdquo; said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+      box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at
+      Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors. But
+      sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+      Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+      being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. &ldquo;Honey
+      Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;He says you
+      couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin
+      ain't worked it like he done in old times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,&rdquo; said Jessamine, buoyantly. &ldquo;And
+      that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it
+      clears, and then we'll go for our ride.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;When does a man get too old to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he
+      must be thirty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old!&rdquo; exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Lin ain't been married very much,&rdquo; pursued Billy. &ldquo;Mother's the only
+      one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's better to,&rdquo; said Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don't think so,&rdquo; said Billy, with disparagement. &ldquo;You ought to see
+      mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,&rdquo; said the
+      boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. &ldquo;Why won't you if he
+      don't mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight
+      in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her
+      to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries about the
+      cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read
+      various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent.
+      But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four o'clock
+      found them much where they had been at eight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you.&rdquo; He was at the window,
+      kicking the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nine times since dinner,&rdquo; she replied, with tireless good humor.
+      &ldquo;Now if you ask me twelve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll tell?&rdquo; said the boy, swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke into a laugh. &ldquo;No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home. When
+      I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me three
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better save 'em up, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty all
+      over.&rdquo; He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been tight
+      closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the dust like
+      a sea. &ldquo;I wish the old train would come,&rdquo; observed Billy, continuing to
+      kick the wall. &ldquo;I wish I was going somewheres.&rdquo; Smoky, level, and hot, the
+      south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred unbroken miles. The plain
+      was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute the near buildings became
+      invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above this travelling blur of the
+      soil the top of the water-tank alone rose bulging into the clear sun. The
+      sand spirals would lick like flames along the bulk of the lofty tub, and
+      soar skyward. It was not shipping season. The freight-cars stood idle in a
+      long line. No cattle huddled in the corrals. No strangers moved in town.
+      No cow-ponies dozed in front of the saloon. Their riders were distant in
+      ranch and camp. Human noise was extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of
+      the sultry blasts the place lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. &ldquo;Why
+      won't you tell me?&rdquo; droned Billy. For some time he had been returning,
+      like a mosquito brushed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's ten times,&rdquo; said Jessamine, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+      less glad now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jessamine, &ldquo;there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+      government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+      take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+      ask him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+      make a direct rejoinder. &ldquo;I guess I'll go outside now,&rdquo; said he, with a
+      threat in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one side
+      of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the freight-cars,&rdquo;
+       he stated, more loudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+      restraint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Just as
+      if I was a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+      you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+      don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+      like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to tell
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not a bit the same, because&mdash;because&mdash;because I treat
+      'em square and because it's not their business. But every time I ask
+      anybody 'most anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and
+      I'll be ten soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a
+      mother I'm agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em,
+      when they bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I
+      had. Guess I will, too, and watch 'em step around.&rdquo; For a moment his mind
+      dwelt upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness, Billy!&rdquo; said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking. &ldquo;The
+      whole heel is scorched off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He eyed the ruin with indifference. &ldquo;Ah, that was last month when I and
+      Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs. Chuck
+      it away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And spoil the pair? No, indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped from
+      home. Lin kind o' mends 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he?&rdquo; said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+      and things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd be
+      looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Billy pondered. &ldquo;And so I said to Lin,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;why didn't he
+      send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey Wiggin
+      laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the cook he
+      asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she chucked 'em
+      like she always did father's and mine. I was with father, you know, when
+      mother was married to Lin that time.&rdquo; He paused again, while his thoughts
+      and fears struggled. &ldquo;But Lin says I needn't ever go back,&rdquo; he went on,
+      reasoning and confiding to her. &ldquo;Lin don't like mother any more, I guess.&rdquo;
+       His pondering grew still deeper, and he looked at Jessamine for some
+      while. Then his face wakened with a new theory. &ldquo;Don't Lin like you any
+      more?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried Jessamine, crimsoning, &ldquo;yes! Why, he sent you to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+      you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+      another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you any
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I hope he loves me,&rdquo; murmured Jessamine. &ldquo;Always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope so too,&rdquo; said Billy, earnestly. &ldquo;For I like you. When I seen
+      him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed for you, I
+      was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be awful. I
+      wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things. Ah, pshaw!
+      I wasn't going to stand that.&rdquo; Billy now came close to Jessamine. &ldquo;I do
+      wish you would come and live with me and Lin,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Lin's awful
+      nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I know it?&rdquo; said Jessamine, tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him,&rdquo; went on Billy. &ldquo;And I
+      seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you found
+      out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing happens at
+      all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was not
+      going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever things she
+      had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train, and
+      the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties behind
+      the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the window to
+      watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed out from the
+      yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then with steam and
+      humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long dust-choked train
+      emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted. There was no one to
+      go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The conductor looked in on
+      business, but she had no telegraphic orders for him. The express agent
+      jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He received his daily smile and nod
+      of friendly discouragement. Then the light bundle of mail was flung inside
+      the door. Separ had no mail to go out. As she was picking up the letters
+      young Billy passed her like a shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had
+      descended from the train, a man and a large woman. His clothes were loose
+      and careless upon him. He held valises, and stood uncertainly looking
+      about him in the storm. Her firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her
+      hat was a large, handsome feather. Along between the several cars brakemen
+      leaned out, watched her, and grinned to each other. But her big,
+      hard-shining blue eyes were fixed curiously upon the station where
+      Jessamine was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all night we may be here, is it?&rdquo; she said to the man, harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to help that?&rdquo; he retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+      Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+      entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+      pole-wagon at Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out and
+      escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because Jessamine
+      spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Governor Barker has not been around here?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon so, sir.&rdquo; Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself out.
+      Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was mostly
+      achieved thus, in amity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the platform the man found his wife again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And we'll eat as we
+      travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her.&rdquo; She made a gesture
+      toward the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;what do you want with her. Don't you know who she
+      is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+      and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+      of her talks to the likes of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+      clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+      why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it was
+      you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this country to
+      have a look at my old friends&mdash;and&rdquo; (she laughed loudly and nodded at
+      the station) &ldquo;my old friends' new friends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned to
+      her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and heard
+      a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the large woman
+      with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the stranger spoke
+      then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was something of threat
+      in the strong animal countenance, something of laughter ready to break
+      out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been in the face, and now, as
+      substitute for what was gone, was the brag look of assertion that it was
+      still all there. Many stranded travellers knocked at Jessamine's door, and
+      now, as always, she offered the hospitalities of her neat abode, the only
+      room in Separ fit for a woman. As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and
+      listened, the door blew shut with a crash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How you have grown!&rdquo; the man was saying; and he smiled. &ldquo;Come, shake
+      hands. I did not think to see you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to touch me!&rdquo; Billy screamed. &ldquo;No, I'll never come with you. Lin
+      says I needn't to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the wheel.
+      &ldquo;Lord, Lord!&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+      bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+      and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in his
+      whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were there to
+      perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved together
+      upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered in the opens by
+      the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and golden-chimneyed
+      bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the greater valley.
+      Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered the mountains
+      where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel of shafts and
+      turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the trees. Through
+      there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the cool quaking asps
+      and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ. Along the ridge-pole
+      of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream, sat McLean's turkeys,
+      and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by his cabin and fenced
+      garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney into the air, in which
+      were no sounds but the running water and the afternoon chirp of birds.
+      Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher sat, lonely, inattentive,
+      polishing the treasured weapon as if it were not already long clean. His
+      target stood some twenty steps in front of him&mdash;a small
+      cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with bullets which he
+      had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently he lifted the
+      pistol and looked at its name&mdash;the word &ldquo;Neighbor&rdquo; engraved upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said he, aloud, &ldquo;if she keeps the rust off mine?&rdquo; Then he
+      lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+      down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but no
+      one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little distance
+      up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for the vehicle
+      to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they came, a man
+      and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat down again.
+      Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in silence and the
+      drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with good looks
+      sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the eye. As the woman
+      had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now, upright, bold, and
+      massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled upon her stolid
+      features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to everything around
+      them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead noise, the reins
+      bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung low. So they drew
+      close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into his face and went
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening,&rdquo; said he, clearing his throat. &ldquo;We heard you was in
+      cow-camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change crossed
+      his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs out as he
+      sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look natural,&rdquo; said the woman, familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seem to be fixed nice here,&rdquo; continued the man. &ldquo;Hadn't heard of it.
+      Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wheel wants greasing,&rdquo; said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay to supper,&rdquo; said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.&rdquo; He twitched the
+      reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. &ldquo;Better
+      stay to supper,&rdquo; he suggested, very distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. &ldquo;Better
+      stay to supper,&rdquo; drawled McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man looked up at his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So yus need me!&rdquo; she broke out. &ldquo;Ain't got heart enough in yer played-out
+      body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband stepped to the ground. &ldquo;I didn't suppose you'd want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her blue
+      staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, yus ain't changed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Same in your looks and same in your
+      actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wanted chickens for supper,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. &ldquo;I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares. As
+      for&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+      &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo; &ldquo;As for you,&rdquo; she continued to Mr. Lusk, &ldquo;don't you be
+      standing dumb same as the horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better take him to the stable, Lusk,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his room,
+      and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his guests no
+      further attention, nor did either of them come in where he was, nor did
+      the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down in the air, and
+      she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he made ready round the
+      stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the setting sunlight, were
+      the only sounds about the cabin. When the host looked into the door of the
+      next room to announce that his meal was served, the woman sat in her chair
+      no longer, but stood with her back to him by a shelf. She gave a slight
+      start at his summons, and replaced something. He saw that she had been
+      examining &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; and his face hardened suddenly to fierceness as he
+      looked at her; but he repeated quietly that she had better come in. Thus
+      did the three sit down to their meal. Occasionally a word about handing
+      some dish fell from one or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk
+      took out his watch and mentioned the hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu've not ate especially hearty,&rdquo; said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; asserted Lusk. &ldquo;Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+      interests to look after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lusk rose and looked at his wife. &ldquo;It'll be ten now before we get to
+      Drybone,&rdquo; said he. And he went down to the stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. &ldquo;I know you seen
+      me,&rdquo; she said, without looking at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw you when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.&rdquo; She sat twisting and
+      pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+      and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+      that he wished to reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you claim that pistol is yourn,&rdquo; she said next, &ldquo;I'll tell you I know
+      better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have to
+      guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have
+      seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!&rdquo; The woman uttered another sudden
+      laugh. &ldquo;I knowed about her&mdash;all. Things get heard of in this world.
+      Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time,
+      and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!&rdquo; Her voice grew slow and
+      absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: &ldquo;It had
+      travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was
+      known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you,
+      and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks
+      that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have
+      their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she
+      knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin' the day you
+      married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me
+      up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was
+      plain she did not want yus. It give me a queer feelin' to see that girl.
+      It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and
+      did not know love. Wait&mdash;wait, Lin! Yu' never hit me yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Nor now. I'm not Lusk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' looked so&mdash;so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old
+      days. Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and
+      say, 'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love
+      yus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; breathed McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+      Jessamine Buckner?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+      flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she spoke pleasant to me&mdash;pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+      tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+      there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+      than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She put her
+      hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never speaking.
+      'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says she. 'Let me
+      get used to it.' And she sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+      a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+      around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+      your six-shooter right by it&mdash;and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+      before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear Creek?
+      It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right out
+      different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+      you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+      madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+      report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and hard
+      work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to yus
+      uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more that was
+      leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced. I knowed
+      your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first time how
+      men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me go on, and
+      when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to her, 'has
+      hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I know,&rdquo; she says, thoughtful-like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that you
+      have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+      different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+      luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+      suspicion the place&mdash;but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
+      the kind that breaks&mdash;if any kind does that. You may sit till the
+      gray hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got
+      manhood like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin'
+      the best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a while.
+      He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss Jessamine.
+      'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait, Lin, wait. Yus
+      needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's walled up for a
+      while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could have told you it was a lie,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+      'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus wants
+      him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second Best.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+      says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+      little &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+      his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after his
+      talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of mine,
+      but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin' me that
+      way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy thing to
+      think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell her about me.
+      He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to me till Lusk
+      came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the rest that went
+      nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they? You have learned
+      something by livin', I guess! And Lin&mdash;your Lin, not mine, nor never
+      mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right now&mdash;he has been
+      gay&mdash;gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of his! Could a
+      boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't touch what's the
+      true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for you hinder him like it
+      will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is different when it comes to
+      passion? We're all one thing then, but they ain't simple. They keep along
+      with lots of other things. I can't make yus know, and I guess it takes a
+      woman like I have been to learn their nature. But you did know he loved
+      you, and you sent him away, and you'll be homeless in yer house when he
+      has done the right thing by himself and found another girl.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+      what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin' at
+      me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw him
+      I would tell him to find a home.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing her?&rdquo;
+       asked the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk laughed. &ldquo;Oh, you innocent!&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said if I came she would leave Separ,&rdquo; muttered McLean, brooding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have kept my promise,&rdquo; Lin continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+      Maybe she's gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. &ldquo;I could be
+      there by to-morrow night,&rdquo; he murmured. Then his face softened. &ldquo;She would
+      never do such a thing!&rdquo; he said, to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+      that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+      interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+      eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+      him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+      beauty relighted the features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the same, same Lin everyways,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A woman is too many for
+      you still, Lin!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, I would not have treated you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+      quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At least I've had plenty of education in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+      come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+      hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in you
+      somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come to
+      know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and you
+      just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so comic
+      and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon. Say, Lin,
+      what made yus do that, anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't hardly say,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Only noticing him so turruble
+      anxious to quit me&mdash;well, a man acts without thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were good
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which times?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yus never loved me!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+      did. Only say it was once that way.&rdquo; And as he sat, she came and put her
+      arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+      held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+      her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+      out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+      after him and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+      where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his hand
+      against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes. Then he
+      continued on his way. &ldquo;Lusk!&rdquo; he called, presently, and in a few steps
+      more, &ldquo;Lusk!&rdquo; Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the husband
+      he began, with quiet evenness, &ldquo;Your wife wants to know&mdash;&rdquo; But he
+      stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The door
+      was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the road
+      went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars were
+      faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks as they
+      sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the trees by the
+      stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by sounded the
+      splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses fed, quietly
+      crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it again. He walked to
+      his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone there. Then he lifted
+      away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of the corral, while the
+      turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the roof. A rope was
+      hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the vine. He opened the
+      corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle of the field, where
+      the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But he ran and herded
+      them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the corral, and flung his
+      noose over two. He dragged two saddles&mdash;men's saddles&mdash;from the
+      stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with the horses saddled.
+      She was sitting quite still by the table where she had sat during the
+      meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look in at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lusk has gone,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I don't know what he expected you would do, or
+      I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with her dumb stare. &ldquo;Gone?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up and ride,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;You are going to Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drybone?&rdquo; she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+      Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table clean,
+      the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she followed with
+      a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small bundle for his own
+      journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse beside a stump. When
+      at his sharp order she came out, he locked his cabin and hung the key by a
+      window, where travellers could find it and be at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed. &ldquo;It's
+      about his size,&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle&mdash;this
+      they had often done together in former years&mdash;and so they took their
+      way down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the
+      first two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put
+      to a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
+      and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+      greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+      through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+      this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+      to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will ask you one thing,&rdquo; said Lin, after ten miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I understand that she&mdash;Miss Buckner, I mean&mdash;mentioned she
+      might be going away from Separ?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I know what you understood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.&rdquo; Her laugh rang out, loud and forlorn&mdash;one
+      brief burst that startled the horses and that must have sounded far across
+      the sage-brush. &ldquo;You men are rich,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+      road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the
+      endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and presently,
+      moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made out the
+      wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put your carbine down,&rdquo; said McLean to Lusk. &ldquo;It's not robbers. It's your
+      wife I'm bringing you.&rdquo; He spoke very quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher &ldquo;Get in, then,&rdquo; he said
+      to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Town's not far now,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Maybe you would prefer riding the balance
+      of the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd&mdash;&rdquo; But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question
+      overcame her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+      continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the road
+      slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the immensity
+      of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the whole
+      unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged from
+      the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom it cut in
+      close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of sand, smooth
+      as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to breathe their
+      horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through the stillness.
+      Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone bridge, but not the
+      bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank showed where stood the
+      hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the table-land and reached
+      the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief historian, the graveyard.
+      Beneath its slanting headboards and wind-shifted sand lay many more people
+      than lived in Drybone. They passed by the fence of this shelterless acre
+      on the hill, and shoutings and high music began to reach them. At the foot
+      of the hill they saw the sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended
+      the gray strip of road. The many sounds&mdash;feet, voices, and music&mdash;grew
+      clearer, unravelling from their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became
+      a tune that could be known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a dance to-night,&rdquo; said the wife to the husband. &ldquo;Hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm telling you to hurry,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;My new dress is in that wagon.
+      There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and the
+      older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat and
+      spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen voice
+      carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+      following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If he
+      did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher was
+      still less to his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,&rdquo; mused Lin, as he rode slowly
+      along. &ldquo;He don't care for himself any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day its
+      hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants were
+      rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male and female,
+      all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their bottles as to
+      make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second childhood which
+      had set in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+      deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and foot,
+      and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their captains upon
+      its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of it. When the War
+      Department ordered the captains to catch Indians, the wives bade them
+      Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the captains to let the
+      Indians go again, still they made the best of it. You must not waste
+      Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many people in Washington
+      and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians, armed with weapons
+      sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was not entirely
+      harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone graveyard. The
+      pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it: &ldquo;Sacred to the memory
+      of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne, May 6, 1875.&rdquo; Or it
+      would be, &ldquo;Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage Creek.&rdquo; But even the
+      financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve the Indian in Drybone's
+      neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands came treading with the next
+      step of civilization into this huge domain, the soldiers were taken away.
+      Some of them went West to fight more Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona.
+      The battles of the others being done, they went East in better coffins to
+      sleep where their mothers or their comrades wanted them. Though wind and
+      rain wrought changes upon the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which
+      these soldiers left behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as
+      were the tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
+      empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
+      cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
+      sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as shall
+      presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
+      professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day; and
+      the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead of
+      guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and there
+      was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old boots.
+      Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow, ragged
+      grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens
+      and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of
+      which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for inside. Among
+      the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for beds too late at
+      the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in the morning air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+      Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+      scalping had disappeared. &ldquo;Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+      accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885.&rdquo; Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+      &ldquo;Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months.&rdquo; This unique
+      corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing tale
+      of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be enough.
+      The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with wood. But
+      in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer than twenty or
+      thirty miles&mdash;none, that is, to make boards of a sufficient width for
+      epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go to hew a board for a
+      man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he said his name was, and to
+      whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling poker debt. Hence it came
+      to pass that headboards grew into a sort of directory. They were light to
+      lift from one place to another. A single coat of white paint would wipe
+      out the first tenant's name sufficiently to paint over it the next
+      comer's. By this thrifty habit the original boards belonging to the
+      soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the new civilian population;
+      and though at first sight you might be puzzled by the layers of names
+      still visible beneath the white paint, you could be sure that the clearest
+      and blackest was the one to which the present tenant had answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+      history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom&mdash;one thin
+      line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+      slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+      the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+      For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed over
+      to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+      government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+      The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+      Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+      not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+      the notice of Drybone's one official&mdash;the coroner! For they did keep
+      a coroner&mdash;Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next
+      door in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally
+      of Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+      industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a living.
+      The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and instantly
+      spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies full of youth and
+      their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by twenties, by fifties,
+      and out again next morning, penniless always and happy. And then the
+      Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each other till the
+      innocents should come to town again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+      furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+      post and corner&mdash;patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
+      an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
+      saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards at
+      the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for their
+      easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the fiddle at
+      Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds there, the
+      dance was being done regularly. &ldquo;Regularly&rdquo; meant that upon the conclusion
+      of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and invited her to
+      choose and it was also regular that the lady should choose. Beer and
+      whiskey were the alternatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+      cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+      saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+      what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see why
+      his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so many gallant
+      years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely cow-puncher sat
+      mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toothpick Kid is here,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and Limber Jim, and the Doughie. You'd
+      think he'd stay away after the trouble he&mdash;I expect that pinto is
+      Jerky Bill's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go home!&rdquo; said a hearty voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+      sombreness. &ldquo;I'd forgot you'd be here,&rdquo; said he. And he sprang to the
+      ground. &ldquo;It's fine to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go home!&rdquo; repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient friend's
+      hand. &ldquo;You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' seem to be on hand yourself,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+      jocular, if he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+      can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doc,&rdquo; interrupted Lin, &ldquo;it's plumb fine to see yu'!&rdquo; Again he shook
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I.&rdquo; His Excellency the Hon.
+      Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+      white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+      McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp,
+      a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an
+      older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different
+      questions. But he knew what he knew. &ldquo;Well, Drybone's the same old
+      Drybone,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see how you walk
+      nowadays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin took a few steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.&rdquo; And his Excellency beamed with
+      professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+      leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the hospital
+      to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon he had been
+      carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shows, does it?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+      I'm&mdash;when I'm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down?&rdquo; suggested his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc. Down,&rdquo; the cow-puncher confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the Governor's
+      good heart. &ldquo;I've got some whiskey along on the trip&mdash;Eastern
+      whiskey,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Come over to my room awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to sleep all night onced,&rdquo; said McLean, as they went. &ldquo;Then I come
+      to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts could
+      make yu'&mdash;make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat, yu'
+      know!&rdquo; he stated, suddenly. &ldquo;And I expect one or two in camp lately have
+      not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+      feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+      feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among the
+      rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard balls
+      reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars and calm
+      splendid dimness of the plain. &ldquo;'Though every prospect pleases, and only
+      man is vile,'&rdquo; he quoted. &ldquo;But don't tell the Republican party I said so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+      didn't know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+      world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+      over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+      Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and nodded
+      his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should have done
+      the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never remembered he was
+      Governor at all with political friends here who had begged a word or two.
+      He became just Dr. Barker again, the young hospital surgeon (the hospital
+      that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again his patient&mdash;&mdash;Lin,
+      the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless, engaging, disobedient, his
+      leg broken and his heart light, with no Jessamine or conscience to rob his
+      salt of its savor. While he now told his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled
+      away careless as ever, and the crack of the billiard balls sounded as of
+      old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody has told you about this, I expect,&rdquo; said the lover. He brought
+      forth the little pistol, &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo; He did not hand it across to Barker,
+      but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the doctor to
+      see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was half hidden in
+      the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but still stood and
+      soon drew it back. &ldquo;I take it around,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and when one of those
+      stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she wants to get rid of
+      me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when I'm off where it's
+      handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I have to tell you
+      what a fool I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whiskey's your side,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+      like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+      more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+      'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered. &ldquo;Not
+      been to our dance, Governor?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this evening
+      he must forego the pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable,&rdquo; said the coroner.
+      &ldquo;They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble in Drybone,
+      but trouble comes to us&mdash;as everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shooting,&rdquo; suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any in
+      this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+      warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey,&rdquo; remarked the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+      politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+      number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health the
+      matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead of sleeping
+      on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next campaign. &ldquo;Boys
+      will be boys,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They ain't pulled any guns to-night. But I come
+      away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't
+      suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's after you,&rdquo; he mentioned
+      incidentally to Lin. &ldquo;He's fillin' up, and says he's after you.&rdquo; McLean
+      nodded placidly, and with scant politeness. He wished this visitor would
+      go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the whiskey. He filled himself a
+      glass. &ldquo;Governor, it has my compliments,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Ambrosier. Honey-doo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boys, good boys!&rdquo; The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+      &ldquo;Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+      generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo.&rdquo; He settled himself
+      deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean rose abruptly. &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'm going to Separ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Separ!&rdquo; exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. &ldquo;Oh, stay with us, stay
+      with us.&rdquo; He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know how well I wish you,&rdquo; said Barker to Lin. &ldquo;I'll just see you
+      start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and walked
+      toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead ruins
+      loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen jockey
+      cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and confusion
+      were set up, and the tune broke off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just like old times!&rdquo; said his Excellency. &ldquo;Where's the dump-pile!&rdquo; It
+      was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to be
+      screened from wandering bullets. &ldquo;A man don't forget his habits,&rdquo; declared
+      the Governor. &ldquo;Makes me feel young again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes me feel old,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;Hark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds like my name,&rdquo; said Barker. They listened. &ldquo;Oh yes. Of course.
+      That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+      minute or so to finish their excitement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't hear any shooting,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;It's something, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and the
+      murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices wandered
+      outside, calling the doctor's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But it's to be done, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+      sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+      waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+      densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and
+      swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be
+      ready when the music should resume. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; they asked. &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo;
+       And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the caresses
+      which the partners gave them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+      after many dances and drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Doc!&rdquo; cried an older one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Doc!&rdquo; chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+      since his day. And the throng caught up the words: &ldquo;Here's Doc! here's
+      Doc!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this flood.
+      Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by those who
+      meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear unfinished&mdash;versions,
+      contradictions, a score of facts. It had been wolf-poison. It had been
+      &ldquo;Rough on Rats.&rdquo; It had been something in a bottle. There was little
+      steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker reached his patient, where she
+      sat in her new dress, hailing him with wild inebriate gayety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must get her to her room, friends,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must get her to her room,&rdquo; went the word. &ldquo;Leave Doc get her to her
+      room.&rdquo; And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'&rdquo; shouted Mrs. Lusk.... &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls,' you
+      fiddler!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll come back,&rdquo; said Barker to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that bottle,
+      Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!&rdquo; She was holding the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help him!&rdquo; said the crowd. &ldquo;Help Doc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of ribbons,
+      fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has six ounces of laudanum in her,&rdquo; Barker told them at the top of
+      his voice. &ldquo;It won't wait all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a whirlwind!&rdquo; said Mrs. Lusk. &ldquo;That's my game! And you done your
+      share,&rdquo; she cried to the fiddler. &ldquo;Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+      Girls' once more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling and
+      ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some fiercely
+      forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers, and she
+      would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for her. But now
+      she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin McLean. And when
+      one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone to shoot him, she
+      laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth. But even in the midst
+      of the joke she asked again in the same voice where was Lin McLean. He
+      came beside her among more jokes. He had kept himself near, and now at
+      sight of him she reached out and held him. &ldquo;Tell them to leave me go to
+      sleep, Lin,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker saw a chance. &ldquo;Persuade her to come along,&rdquo; said he to McLean.
+      &ldquo;Minutes are counting now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll come,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+      still to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the old friends nudged each other. &ldquo;Back seats for us,&rdquo; they
+      said. &ldquo;But we've had our turn in front ones.&rdquo; Then, thinking they would be
+      useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering Barker
+      and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made its slow
+      way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and holes. Thus,
+      presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set her down,
+      crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest gathered
+      thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing. The notion
+      to stay was plain on their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker surveyed them. &ldquo;Give the doctor a show now, boys,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You've
+      done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you,&rdquo; he whispered to
+      McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering of
+      wind. &ldquo;Don't crowd his elbows,&rdquo; they began to say at once, and told each
+      other to come away. &ldquo;We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want to be
+      shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty near
+      absent.&rdquo; The room thinned of them forthwith. &ldquo;Fix her up good, Doc,&rdquo; they
+      said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the threshold and porch
+      with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one or other stumbled on
+      the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet. &ldquo;You want to tame
+      yourself,&rdquo; was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid came
+      precipitately back. &ldquo;Her cash,&rdquo; they said. And leaving the notes and
+      coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on the way back to the dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you,&rdquo; repeated Barker to McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. &ldquo;Jessamine wants him about
+      now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!&rdquo; And she laughed her hard,
+      rich laugh, looking from one to the other. &ldquo;Not the two of yus can't save
+      me,&rdquo; she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+      thickness sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk her up and down,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Keep her moving. I'll look what I
+      can find. Keep her moving brisk.&rdquo; At once he was out of the door; and
+      before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+      across the quadrangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls!'&rdquo; exclaimed the woman. &ldquo;Old times! Old times!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;Walk.&rdquo; And he took her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with him
+      easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever he
+      brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the open
+      door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark. But presently
+      she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned sullen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; said she, laughing. But she found that she must go with
+      him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're hurting me,&rdquo; she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+      her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. &ldquo;He's gone, Lin,&rdquo;
+       she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+      that he had set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave me down. You hurt,&rdquo; she pleaded, hanging on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the floor,&rdquo; she pleaded again. &ldquo;Just one minute on the floor. He'll
+      think you could not keep me lifted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+      had undertaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's playing out!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You'll be played out soon.&rdquo; She
+      laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more to
+      feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+      &ldquo;Jessamine!&rdquo; she whispered to him. &ldquo;Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion you,
+      Lin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk sense,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll go;
+      you can't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk, walk!&rdquo; he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing his
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle&mdash;Ah, walk me to
+      glory, then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for
+      keeps. Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet&mdash;I'll bet she
+      has never seen you look so. Let me&mdash;let me watch yus. Anyway, she
+      knows I came first!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped her savagely. &ldquo;First! You and twenty of yu' don't&mdash;God!!
+      what do I talk to her for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;because&mdash;I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off&mdash;but
+      he had to sling&mdash;you can't&mdash;stop&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through deeper
+      and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+      continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+      with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+      shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+      body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+      breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+      fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. &ldquo;Buffalo Girls!&rdquo; he
+      shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her as
+      though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to wake,
+      he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load in his
+      grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. &ldquo;So I've got
+      you!&rdquo; he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came up
+      with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+      together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+      McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged and
+      encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him, threatened
+      him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left him suddenly
+      and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him here. He glanced
+      at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men. The husband's brief
+      courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who himself could not rise.
+      Barker pulled them apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, boy, you're not hurt?&rdquo; he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+      cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not hurt?&rdquo; repeated Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered the cow-puncher, slowly. &ldquo;I guess not.&rdquo; He looked about the
+      room and at the door. &ldquo;I got interrupted,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be all right soon,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody cares for me!&rdquo; cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+      weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; ordered Barker, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't accuse me, Governor,&rdquo; screamed Lusk. &ldquo;I'm innocent.&rdquo; And he rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. &ldquo;I'll not say there
+      was much chance for her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But any she had is gone through you.
+      She'll die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody cares for me!&rdquo; repeated the man. &ldquo;He has learned my boy to scorn
+      me.&rdquo; He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay sitting,&rdquo; said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+      help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+      sank as he had been. &ldquo;I guess I don't amount to much,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I feel
+      like I was nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm something,&rdquo; said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+      breath. &ldquo;And I know what she weighs.&rdquo; He stared admiringly through his
+      spectacles at the seated man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+      Barker's face. &ldquo;Doc,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+      this way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?&rdquo; pursued McLean,
+      wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You six-foot infant!&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Look at your hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin stared at it&mdash;the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin
+      grooved raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the
+      struggle had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his
+      wrists and his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked
+      over at the bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something,
+      a sound, not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher
+      shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is strong,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+      yet, maybe. Queer world!&rdquo; he moralized. &ldquo;People half killing themselves to
+      keep one in it who wanted to go&mdash;and one that nobody wanted to stay!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+      him. &ldquo;I would not want,&rdquo; he said, with hesitating utterance&mdash;&ldquo;I'd not
+      wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker touched him on the arm. &ldquo;If there had been another man I could
+      trust&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust!&rdquo; broke in the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu' ever
+      done me. I know I am a man now&mdash;if my nerve ain't gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've known you were a man since I knew you!&rdquo; said the hearty Governor.
+      And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. &ldquo;As for your nerve,
+      I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after&rdquo;&mdash;he glanced at the bed&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the nerve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'&mdash;don't let's while
+      she's&mdash;I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+      stammering to say. &ldquo;What do you want, Judge?&rdquo; he inquired, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; began Slaghammer to Barker&mdash;&ldquo;I am informed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak quieter, Judge,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, &ldquo;that there
+      was a case for the coroner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be notified,&rdquo; put in McLean again. &ldquo;Meanwhile you'll talk quiet in
+      this room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a little early, Judge,&rdquo; said Barker, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your ten dollars are safe,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+      down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and he
+      was desirous of a second term.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under the apprehension that it had already occurred&mdash;the
+      misapprehension&mdash;I took steps to impanel a jury,&rdquo; said he, addressing
+      both Barker and McLean. &ldquo;They are&mdash;ah&mdash;waiting outside.
+      Responsible men, Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few
+      responsible men to-night, but I procured these at a little game where they
+      were&mdash;ah&mdash;losing. You may go back, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he, going to
+      the door. &ldquo;I will summon you in proper time.&rdquo; He looked in the room again.
+      &ldquo;Is the husband not intending&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's enough, Judge,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;There's too many here without adding
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge,&rdquo; spoke a voice at the door, &ldquo;ain't she ready yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is still passing away,&rdquo; observed Slaghammer, piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I was thinking,&rdquo; said the man&mdash;&ldquo;I was just&mdash;You see, us
+      jury is dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and&mdash;Judge,
+      would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+      if it's a sure thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see none, my friend,&rdquo; said Slaghammer, benevolently, &ldquo;since it must
+      be.&rdquo; He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+      importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+      Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+      five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+      would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+      withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+      received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+      his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+      thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+      than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant to watch
+      until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew documents from
+      his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over them. In all
+      precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late. The fiddle,
+      the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls travelled clear
+      and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently steps unsteadily drew
+      near, and round the corner of the door a voice, plaintive and diffident,
+      said, &ldquo;Judge, ain't she most pretty near ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wake up, Judge!&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Your jury has gone dry again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man appeared round the door&mdash;a handsome, dishevelled fellow&mdash;with
+      hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a second
+      voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his friends.
+      Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once to napping.
+      From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each arriving more
+      unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his fee and no more
+      messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in his chair. McLean and
+      Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink ribbons, breathed and
+      breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping and falling with light
+      sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear itself away, and through the
+      stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and expand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge,&rdquo; said Barker, quietly, &ldquo;you may call them now.&rdquo; And with careful
+      steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+      lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+      but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+      ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. &ldquo;Hind sight
+      is a turruble clear way o' seein' things,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I think I'll take a
+      walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;The jury only need me, and I'll join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay had
+      been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had shared
+      each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their brains
+      and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and growing
+      weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant beds. Each
+      had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and thus,
+      unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the wide
+      sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+      dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received Barker's
+      testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even while he was
+      issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars came Chalkeye
+      and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in their hopes and
+      good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both. The night had
+      gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be fine. It must be
+      well with everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say!&rdquo; they exclaimed, taken aback. &ldquo;Too bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+      thought paused for a moment. &ldquo;Her gone!&rdquo; they murmured. &ldquo;Hard to get used
+      to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Lusk,&rdquo; answered Slaghammer, &ldquo;doubtless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the grass.
+      She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill&mdash;not Dollar Bill, Jerky
+      Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge&mdash;to fix up a hearse, and we'll
+      be back.&rdquo; The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and instantly
+      were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+      hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+      the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+      bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in the
+      cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger until
+      breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and joking; and
+      across the river some were holding horse-races upon the level beyond the
+      hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty, wandering shouts broke
+      out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed at cans or prairie dogs or
+      anything, cracked as they galloped at large. Their speeding, clear-cut
+      forms would shine upon the bluffs, and, descending, merge in the dust
+      their horses had raised. Yet all this was nothing in the vastness of the
+      growing day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+      Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+      strange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+      riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+      grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was a
+      calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead. It
+      was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a coffin, boys!&rdquo; said one, shrewd at guessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+      wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+      brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+      quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already were
+      Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing up with
+      their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and comment.
+      Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And it amazed
+      each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things with the
+      others. &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; each one began. &ldquo;Her, does he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, pshaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. &ldquo;Dead?
+      Why, pshaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems Doc couldn't swim her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't swim her out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;there's one less of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure! She was one of the boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed her at Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed loudly at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a lonesome coffin,&rdquo; said the Doughie. &ldquo;That the best you could
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd say so!&rdquo; said Toothpick Kid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choices are getting scarce up there,&rdquo; said Chalkeye. &ldquo;We looked the lot
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on the
+      hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+      rattling between them. &ldquo;Where's your hearse, Jerky?&rdquo; asked Chalkeye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have her round in a minute,&rdquo; said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+      three or four others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same,&rdquo; repeated the Doughie. And they
+      surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did like fixin's,&rdquo; said Limber Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fixin's!&rdquo; said Toothpick Kid. &ldquo;That's easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted coffin
+      into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's store.
+      Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These had been
+      able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had stretched
+      themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some with not even
+      their hats taken off and some with their boots against the rough hair of
+      the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few waking, and so there
+      was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs were unrolled and flung
+      aside till many folds and colors draped the motionless sleepers, and at
+      length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards of this drab chintz were ripped
+      off, money treble its worth was thumped upon the counter, and they
+      returned, bearing it like a streamer to the coffin. While the noise of
+      their hammers filled the room, the hearse came tottering to the door,
+      pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an ambulance left behind by the
+      soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape, concave in body, its top blown
+      away in winds of long ago; and as they revolved, its wheels dished in and
+      out like hoops about to fall. While some made a harness from ropes, and
+      throwing the saddles off two ponies backed them to the vehicle, the body
+      was put in the coffin, now covered by the chintz. But the laudanum upon
+      the front of her dress revolted those who remembered their holidays with
+      her, and turning the woman upon her face, they looked their last upon her
+      flashing, colored ribbons, and nailed the lid down. So they carried her
+      out, but the concave body of the hearse was too short for the coffin; the
+      end reached out, and it might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the
+      reins, sat upon the other end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was
+      making ready to follow in some way. They had sought the husband, the chief
+      mourner. He, however, still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and
+      despising him as she had done, they left him to wake when he should
+      choose. Those men who could sit in their saddles rode escort, the old
+      friends nearest, and four held the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who
+      were to draw the hearse. They had never known harness before, and they
+      plunged with the men who held them. Behind the hearse the women followed
+      in a large ranch-wagon, this moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this,
+      and their foals gambolled around them. The great flat-topped dray for
+      hauling poles came last, with its four government mules. The cow-boys had
+      caught sight of it and captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they
+      carried the sleeping men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then,
+      searching Drybone outside and in for any more incapable of following, they
+      brought them, and the dray was piled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his teeth,
+      cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang away,
+      scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped past the
+      husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the grass.
+      Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the throng
+      cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with it, Jim!&rdquo; they shouted. &ldquo;You're a king!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and nearly
+      hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from it
+      leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air, he faced
+      the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The horsemen
+      came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth. Wheeling at
+      the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The skilful nooses
+      flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were dragged back to
+      the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started the wild ponies
+      quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the coffin steady in the
+      ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their fringed leather and
+      broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many of them swaying, their
+      faces full of health, and the sun and the strong drink. The women
+      followed, whispering a little; and behind them the slow dray jolted, with
+      its heaps of men waking from the depths of their whiskey and asking what
+      this was. So they went up the hill. When the riders reached the tilted
+      gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and scattered among the hillocks,
+      stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker and McLean, quietly waiting
+      there, and began choosing among the open, weather-drifted graves from
+      which the soldiers had been taken. Their figures went up and down the
+      uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said the Doughie, &ldquo;here's a good hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a deep one,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've struck a well here,&rdquo; said some more. &ldquo;Put her in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+      choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+      opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+      about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one end
+      of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they pulled
+      the ropes helplessly above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean spoke to Barker. &ldquo;I'd like to stop this,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but a man might
+      as well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might as well stop a cloud-burst,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc. But it feels&mdash;it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+      McLeans.&rdquo; And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them and
+      lifted the cow-boy out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Slaghammer, stepping forward, &ldquo;this should proceed no
+      further without some&mdash;perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay
+      me?&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't use that on funerals,&rdquo; said the Doughie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?&rdquo; inquired the coroner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+      remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+      was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the hill
+      in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so returned.
+      But the book was beyond them. &ldquo;Take it, you; you take it,&rdquo; each one said.
+      False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages back and forth,
+      until impatience conquered them. They left the book and lowered the
+      coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly, decently,
+      steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the bottom with
+      was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid sand; and a
+      little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the same moment.
+      The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single jar, quietly
+      smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One removed his hat, and
+      then another, and then all. They stood eying each his neighbor, and
+      shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley. Then they filled in
+      the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near by, and wrote the name
+      and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sure one of us,&rdquo; said Chalkeye. &ldquo;Let's give her the Lament.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they followed his lead:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   &ldquo;Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me&mdash;
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down the
+      hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across many
+      sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves had
+      emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were gone&mdash;ready
+      with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or heroes, as the
+      hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted quadrangle the
+      sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind shook the aces and
+      kings in the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to mend,
+      and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after that
+      strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good man's heart
+      without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands despatched it
+      her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that visitor now,
+      she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on her table.
+      &ldquo;Why did he go away so quickly?&rdquo; she sighed. But when young Billy returned
+      to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a match for him. He
+      reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin McLean did not come
+      back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she had threatened. She
+      looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy, I'll tell you just why it is,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Lin thinks I'm not a
+      real girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;ah,&rdquo; drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;ah,&rdquo; went the boy, entirely angry. &ldquo;Anybody can tell you're a
+      girl.&rdquo; And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor
+      did his dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+      jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+      passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+      the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the boy,
+      and the man came into town galloping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought to
+      do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he held
+      her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say &ldquo;Forgive me! Oh, why have you
+      been so long?&rdquo; She took him back to the room where his picture was, and
+      made him sit, and sat herself close. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked him. For
+      through the love she read something else in his serious face. So then he
+      told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all that he had to
+      tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him. &ldquo;Dear, dear
+      neighbor!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+      Billy burst open the door. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I knowed Lin knowed you
+      were a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+      liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin on
+      Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the only care
+      of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though singularly
+      enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of Jessamine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                The black pines stand high up the hills,
+                  The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+                While through the canyon's riven cleft
+                  From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+                Serene above their paling shapes
+                  One star hath wakened in the sky.
+                And here in the gray world below
+                  Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+                Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+                  And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+                Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+                  Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+                Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+                  Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+                But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+                  And he goes singing might and main.
+          </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1385 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1385 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1385)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lin McLean
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Posting Date: August 22, 2008 [EBook #1385]
+Release Date: July, 1998
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIN MCLEAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Brewer
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN
+
+By Owen Wister
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
+page.
+
+Always yours,
+
+OWEN WISTER
+
+Philadelphia, 1897
+
+
+
+
+HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+
+In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
+upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
+one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
+world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
+in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
+dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
+indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
+Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
+some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing
+day. The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef
+round-up, not yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding
+bachelors of the saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's
+credit on the ranch books.
+
+“What's the matter with some variety?” muttered the boy in his blankets.
+
+The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
+from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
+upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
+bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
+south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
+River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
+forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
+mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
+riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside
+the mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
+impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so
+it wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush
+and the yellow, vanishing plains.
+
+“Variety, you bet!” young Lin repeated, aloud.
+
+He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that
+made his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and
+limped blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was
+always more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the
+fork from Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
+shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
+his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
+shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
+water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
+returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
+breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+
+“Bugged up to kill!” exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+
+“He sure has not shaved again?” another inquired, with concern.
+
+“I ain't got my opera-glasses on,” answered a third.
+
+“He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache,” said a fourth.
+
+“My spring crop,” remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, “has
+juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
+which wanders out of your face.”
+
+“Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man,” said the
+other.
+
+But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+
+Him Lin McLean at once addressed. “I was wantin' to speak to you,” said
+he.
+
+The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. “I
+understand you're tired of work,” he remarked.
+
+“Who told you?” asked the bewildered Lin.
+
+The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. “Well, I have a way
+of taking things in at a glance,” said he. “That's why I'm foreman, I
+expect. So you've had enough work?”
+
+“My system's full of it,” replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+thinking, he added, “And I'd like my time.”
+
+Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+
+“It's good we're not busy,” said the foreman.
+
+“Meanin' I'd quit all the same?” inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+
+“No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+post before it gets hot.”
+
+The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek,
+and the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
+formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
+the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
+cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.
+
+“So-long!” he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might
+never be going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+demonstrative by habit.
+
+“Going to stop long at Washakie?” asked one.
+
+“Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now,” another mentioned.
+
+“If there's a new girl,” said a third, “kiss her one for me, and tell
+her I'm handsomer than you.”
+
+“I ain't a deceiver of women,” said Lin.
+
+“That's why you'll tell her,” replied his friend.
+
+“Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?” asked the cook,
+grieved to lose him.
+
+“I'm after some variety,” said the boy.
+
+“If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!”
+ shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+
+This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+
+“So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?” said the
+foreman.
+
+“Brought my tooth-brush,” said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+“Going to Denver?”
+
+“Why, maybe.”
+
+“Take in San Francisco?”
+
+“Sounds slick.”
+
+“Made any plans?”
+
+“Gosh, no!”
+
+“Don't want anything on your brain?”
+
+“Nothin' except my hat, I guess,” said Lin, and broke into cheerful
+song:
+
+   “'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'”
+
+They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
+bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses,
+upward and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind
+lay the deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees
+like bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also
+to the edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step
+farther away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed
+together over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple
+the great country which lay sunk beneath.
+
+“A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place,” said Lin to the
+foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. “She's sure there,
+though,” he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew
+thoughtful. “Shucks!” said he then, abruptly, “where's any joy in
+money that's comin' till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o'
+spot-cash.”
+
+He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him.
+Thus they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to
+Fort Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+
+His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away
+on his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+entertainment--a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to
+attend the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending
+to some visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to
+watch the ring of painted naked savages.
+
+The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. “What's he quitting his
+job for?” he asked the foreman.
+
+“Same as most of 'em quit.”
+
+“Nothing?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Been satisfactory?”
+
+“Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with
+a horse.”
+
+“And worthless,” suggested the post-trader.
+
+“Well--not yet. He's headed that way.”
+
+“Been punching cattle long?”
+
+“Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most
+a year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte
+Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the
+fracture was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the
+hog-ranch across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker
+to tell you about that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went
+up over on to Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting
+outfit on Galena Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested
+in some Dutchwoman up there, but she had trouble--died, I think they
+said--and he came down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to
+Mexico or Africa next.”
+
+“If you need him,” said the post-trader, closing his ledger, “you can
+offer him five more a month.”
+
+“That'll not hold him.”
+
+“Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+I've got to see his room is fixed up for him.”
+
+“The bishop!” said the foreman. “I've heard him highly spoken of.”
+
+“You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man.”
+
+“He's better than that; he's a man,” stated the foreman--“at least so
+they tell me.”
+
+Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a
+visit from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+wolf-dance this afternoon--red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was
+not only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went
+to look at him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal
+service this Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers
+and their families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the
+agency doctor, the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three
+gamblers, the waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was
+there because she was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in
+blankets, with two royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of
+squatting Indian children, silent and marvelling; and, on the back
+bench, the commanding officer's new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin
+McLean.
+
+Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and
+pageant, his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught
+resting upon him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content
+with the other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him
+and the stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel
+and found the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when
+a cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left
+them late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of
+the Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among
+their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
+keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
+while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
+to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
+from round his neck.
+
+The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
+breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
+caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
+into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
+silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
+of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now
+it prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
+address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a
+plain suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union
+Pacific Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River,
+had despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
+
+Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+
+“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
+neck and kissed him.”
+
+The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+
+Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
+she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
+but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
+brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
+music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
+watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
+hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face
+and the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the
+alert, listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern
+how that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw
+morals, attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and
+they filled with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie
+went to sleep, and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same
+alert position till Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to
+sit down through the hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and
+all the people dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings,
+and the cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
+
+“What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?” inquired the lady, after a
+hundred yards.
+
+“Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?” asked Lin, absently.
+
+“No, indeed. What's them?”
+
+“Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too.” Mr. McLean fell silent
+again.
+
+“I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye,” said
+Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered
+away with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+
+Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+
+“Only,” protested Sabina, “I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out
+and--well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River
+politeness.”
+
+But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the
+afternoon. Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat
+levels of sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They
+splashed across the many little running channels which lead water
+through that thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no
+nearer, behind them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green
+trees, dwindled to a toy village.
+
+“My! but it's far to everywheres here,” exclaimed Sabina, “and it's
+little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do
+the talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?”
+
+“That's Little Wind River Canyon,” said the young man. “Feel like goin'
+there, Miss Stone?”
+
+“Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's.”
+
+So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+
+“When do your folks eat supper?” inquired Lin.
+
+“Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on.”
+
+“How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?”
+ Lin asked.
+
+“What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day,” said
+the lady.
+
+“Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+colonel's table,” Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. “That
+is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
+know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'.”
+
+“You're the teasingest man--” said Miss Stone, pouting. “I might have
+knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked.”
+
+“Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+out to-night.”
+
+“Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!” and Sabina giggled.
+
+A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+
+“Something like them partridges used to,” said Lin, musingly.
+
+“Partridges?” inquired Sabina.
+
+“Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are
+gone by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess.”
+
+Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+
+“We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times,” said Lin, his
+wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+advantage.
+
+“I expect you used to dance a lot,” remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+
+“Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?”
+
+Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+
+“Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?” she inquired next.
+
+“Why, sure,” said Lin, waking for a moment; “but I like your color best.
+A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's.”
+
+“Indeed, I don't think so!” exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant
+to perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+
+“Never?” said he. “It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water.
+It's different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in
+July--around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the
+islands. I've swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to
+board in Boston.” He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm.
+Suddenly all dreaminess left him.
+
+“I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?” he
+said.
+
+Miss Stone was at a loss.
+
+“I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston.”
+
+Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the
+post and her.
+
+“I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?” said she.
+
+“I ain't got no folks,” replied Lin, “barring a brother. I expect he is
+taking good care of himself.”
+
+“Don't you correspond?”
+
+“Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+nothin'.”
+
+Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
+rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she
+noticed him step to his own.
+
+“Why, I didn't know you were lame!” cried she.
+
+“Shucks!” said Lin. “It don't cramp my style any.” He had sprung on
+his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
+measure of his activity.
+
+“That's how,” said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. “No,”
+ Lin continued, “Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have
+a look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good
+enough for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot
+of years now. Whoop ye!” he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter
+at a jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+
+Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
+took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and
+found the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering
+dish of fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself
+that inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed
+Duxbury clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that
+she found others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and
+fifty miles from the railway, and men there were many and girls were
+few.
+
+The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with
+resignation, knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them.
+Lin climbed up beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+
+“Don't get full, Lin,” said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+store.
+
+“My plans ain't settled that far yet,” replied Mr. McLean.
+
+“Leave it out of them,” said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
+the stage.
+
+It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
+the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
+Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
+pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
+over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+
+“When do yu' figure on comin' back?” inquired the driver.
+
+“Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell,” said Lin. “About a
+month, I guess.”
+
+He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
+during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
+sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you
+were? But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the
+bottom of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided
+it was a suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them
+to change their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and
+unharness. Then they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace
+was spliced with rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground,
+the bishop proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles.
+They crossed through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines,
+and, reaching Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That
+afternoon the stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform
+at Green River; this was the route in those days before the mid-winter
+catastrophes of frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was
+going west. His robes had passed him on the up stage during the night.
+When the reverend gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short
+moment, and then laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+
+“I can understand how you swear sometimes,” he said to Lin McLean; “but
+I can't, you see. Not even at this.”
+
+The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+
+“Good-bye and good luck to you,” continued the bishop, giving his hand
+to Lin. “And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting
+full' out of your plans?”
+
+Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. “I don't guess I can, sir,” he
+said. “I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see,” he added.
+
+“That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
+in the same place.”
+
+He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He
+walked up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright
+lights of the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way
+piano-music sounded through one of the many open doors.
+
+“Wonder if the professor's there yet?” said Lin, and he went across the
+railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into
+the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin
+did not join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a
+dealer and a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were
+painted sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares.
+The legend “Jacks pay” was also clearly painted. The player placed chips
+on whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards
+(quite fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton
+case made with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of
+chips rose high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was
+lessened by one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had
+much better have joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of
+the dealer met the eye of the player. After that slight incident the
+player's chip pile began to rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer
+made admiring comments on such a run of luck. Then the player stopped,
+cashed in, and said good-night, having nearly doubled the number of his
+gold pieces.
+
+“Five dollars' worth,” said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings
+of fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then,
+singularly enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars
+behind the game.
+
+“I guess I'll leave the train go without me,” said Lin, buying five
+dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+
+During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised
+and sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin
+lost--just as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of
+eyes early in the evening.
+
+When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was
+all back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with
+his hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his
+fingers came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by
+this hour must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+
+“I'm following it, you bet,” he declared, kicking the rail. “Not yet
+though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+Boston.” He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked
+freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. “And I guess Boston'll
+have to get along without me for a spell, too,” continued Lin. “A man
+don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin'
+with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that
+hog chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank,
+he'd say to me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit
+o' clothes and--no, sir, you bet!”
+
+Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly
+down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals,
+the great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its
+locomotive moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed
+steaming to its place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted,
+heavily bumping and parting.
+
+“Hello, Lin!” A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+
+“Hello!” responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+
+“They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it.” Honey
+offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+
+“Bruck my leg,” corrected Lin, “if that's what they meant.”
+
+“I expect that's it,” said Honey. “You've had no other trouble?”
+
+“Been boomin',” said Lin.
+
+From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+
+“Wher're yu' bound?” inquired Honey.
+
+“East,” said Lin.
+
+“Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west.”
+
+“That just suits me,” said Lin.
+
+The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that
+wall Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents
+freshly through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from
+locomotive to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion
+and slowly rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and
+the bells of the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose
+great dull-red cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union
+Pacific locomotives sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like
+ships at sea.
+
+Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between,
+as their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding.
+Mutual whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+
+“What are yu' doing at present?” Lin inquired.
+
+“Prospectin'.”
+
+Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy
+Lin. To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk
+of his friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He
+saw himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down
+a bag of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand
+him in exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded
+over, and heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue
+water that twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk
+check. He had his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country
+to him, his eye fell casually upon a mile-post: “Omaha, 876.” He began
+to watch for them:--877, 878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+
+“What are yu' laughin' about?” asked Honey.
+
+“Oh, the wheels.”
+
+“Wheels?”
+
+“Don't yu' hear 'em?” said Lin. “'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'.
+'Variety, variety.'”
+
+“Huh!” said Honey, with scorn. “'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it.”
+
+“You're no poet,” observed Mr. McLean.
+
+As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of
+the window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+sulkily, “Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
+yu' in Evanston?” And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
+friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+
+By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends,
+forgot prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed
+north In Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose,
+and came to Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek.
+Here the berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and
+the bears in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually
+with the season, making variety in the otherwise even life of the
+prospectors. It was now August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making
+mud-pies for sixty days. But the philosopher's stone was not in the wash
+at that placer, nor did Lin gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the
+nail of his thumb. Then they heard of an excitement at Obo, Nevada, and,
+hurrying to Obo, they made some more mud-pies.
+
+Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, “Lin,
+wher're yu' goin'?”
+
+And Lin always replied, “East.” This became a signal for drinks.
+
+For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights
+of untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with
+falling waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation
+presides over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof
+of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The
+mean ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot
+of mange. No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry,
+unimportant ugliness.
+
+There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting
+of the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable.
+Now and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about
+and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water.
+Passing each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned
+pair of overalls the same label, “Levi Strauss, No. 2,” with a picture
+of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly
+struggling to split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label
+just like that too, and when he considered all things he laughed to
+himself. Then, having stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would
+return to his ditch. As autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy
+gravel they were sunk in. He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his
+boots, and hated Obo, Nevada. But he held himself ready to say “East”
+ whenever he saw Honey coming along with the bottle. The cold weather
+put an end to this adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow,
+through which the sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the
+two friends drifted southward.
+
+Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the
+dirt. It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze.
+But this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than
+Nevada. Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them
+found a little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite
+froze one day.
+
+“We're seein' the country, anyway,” said Honey.
+
+“Seein' hell,” said Lin, “and there's more of it above ground than I
+thought.”
+
+“What'll we do?” Honey inquired.
+
+“Have to walk for a job--a good-payin' job,” responded the hopeful
+cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+
+Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the
+simpler prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in
+Boston between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this
+qualification, the apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa,
+and liked him. Lin made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of;
+and, as the mild weather began, he materially increased the apothecary's
+business by persuading him to send East for a soda-water fountain. The
+ladies of the town clustered around this entertaining novelty, and while
+sipping vanilla and lemon bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of
+the town discovered that whiskey with soda and strawberry syrup was
+delicious, and produced just as competent effects. A group of them were
+generally standing in the shop and shaking dice to decide who should
+pay for the next, while Lin administered to each glass the necessary
+ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a little more steadily than
+had been its wont, and he divided with the penniless Honey.
+
+But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the
+new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his
+feet, was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the
+dance-hall at the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next
+day but one.
+
+The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had
+white eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you
+spoke pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried
+to beat your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what
+made him so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and
+every gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get
+up a race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon
+opened a bank account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a
+silver-inlaid one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle
+richly stamped. Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the
+drug-store and inquire, “Lin, wher're yu' goin'?”
+
+But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water
+fountain with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season
+of fine sand and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung
+heavily over man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling
+with joy; the little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and
+shrank to a succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus
+bloomed everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the
+sand. There were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste
+very good; but if you drank from the standing pools where the river
+had been, you repaired to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of
+wandering players came dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa,
+played a brass-band up and down the street, and announced the powerful
+drama of “East Lynne.” Then Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that
+lie between there and Chelsea, and of the sea that must look so cool.
+He forgot them while following the painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel;
+but, going to bed in the back part of the drug-store, he remembered how
+he used to beat everybody swimming in the salt water.
+
+“I'm goin',” he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+inspected his bank account. “I'm sure goin',” he repeated, blowing the
+light out, “and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!” for he had
+often thought of the bishop's story. “You bet!” he remarked once more in
+a muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+
+“I'd pull out with yer,” he said, “only I can do business round Yuma and
+westward with the pinto.”
+
+For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and
+was in his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through
+Denver to Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for
+some months. Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a
+buffalo coat for his brother--something scarce to see in these days.
+
+“Frank'll have to get along without it,” he observed, philosophically,
+and took the next eastbound train.
+
+If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft,
+gray hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not
+the majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa,
+with its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a
+little more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are
+not understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn
+at Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of
+there was east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important
+stopping-place. In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and
+silence prevailed throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston
+without change. Had not home memories begun impetuously to flood
+his mind, he would have felt himself conspicuous. Town clothes and
+conventions had their due value with him. But just now the boy's
+single-hearted thoughts were far from any surroundings, and he was
+murmuring to himself, “To-morrow! tomorrow night!”
+
+There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin
+for thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached
+the next day one or two of them commented that he was the most
+attractive-looking man they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness,
+and wide-open, jocular eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly
+conscientious wild animal, there was nothing remarkable about young
+Lin except stage effect. The conductor had been annoyed to have such
+a passenger; but the cow-puncher troubled no one, and was extremely
+silent. So evidently was he a piece of the true frontier that curious
+and hopeful fellow-passengers, after watching him with diversion, more
+than once took a seat next to him. He met their chatty inquiries with
+monosyllables so few and so unprofitable in their quiet politeness that
+the passengers soon gave him up. At Springfield he sent a telegram to
+his brother at the great dry-goods establishment that employed him.
+
+The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung
+by hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off
+and his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long
+after, Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods
+used to be above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton.
+“Faneuil's next,” he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten
+home-knowledge shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated
+near said, “Beg pardon?” but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious
+Lin, with his forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed
+into sight, and soon after they were running in the darkness between
+high walls; but the cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be
+seen. When the porter announced “Boston,” he started up and followed
+like a sheep in the general exodus. Down on the platform he moved along
+with the slow crowd till some one touched him, and, wheeling round, he
+seized both his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.
+
+There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce
+civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted
+resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by;
+and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and
+smiled gently to herself.
+
+But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had
+risen with his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the
+paying-tellers of banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at
+the Parker House was president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal
+the cow-puncher to these shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would
+not stay very long. Of course he was glad to see him again, and he would
+take him to dine at some obscure place this first evening. But this was
+not Lin's plan. Frank must dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank
+demurred, saying it was he that should be host.
+
+“And,” he added, “they charge up high for wines at Parker's.” Then for
+the twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+
+“You're goin' to take your grub with me,” said Lin. “That's all right, I
+guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like
+as if father was livin'--(his voice softened)--and here to see me come
+home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can
+yu' spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off
+with steamed Duxbury clams.” The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where
+the coin made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, “I suppose
+Swampscott's there yet?”
+
+“Yes,” said Frank. “It's a dead little town, is Swampscott.”
+
+“I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow,” Lin pursued.
+
+“Oh, that's been pulled down since--I forget the year they improved that
+block.”
+
+Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+first and last home they had ever had.
+
+“Seventy-nine is when it was,” continued Frank. “So you can save the
+trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott.”
+
+“I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway,” said the cow-puncher in his
+offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+
+They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+surveyed the younger's appearance.
+
+But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+“After to-morrow,” said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder,
+“yu' can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu'
+pretty close, Frank.”
+
+Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+the stress became too great. “Lin,” said he, “while you're running with
+our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know.”
+
+It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+
+The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+shoulder. “You've made it plain,” he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+eyes down into Frank's. “You've explained yourself fairly well. Run
+along with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round
+and causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these
+things at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu'
+need to. I guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu'
+see me around on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable
+to close your jaw up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that
+to your crowd than you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got
+for a brother.”
+
+Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences
+had occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked
+him on his glumness.
+
+Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the
+bright, hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the
+graveyard he saw a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel,
+weeping.
+
+“There ain't nobody to do that for this one,” thought the cow-puncher,
+and looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at
+the woman.
+
+She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief
+was shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place
+goodbye. So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless
+past. When she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter
+from the street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly
+lump of flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in
+Swampscott. He spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but
+her act of kneeling he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some
+hours he hung about the little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the
+salt water where he used to swim.
+
+“Yu' don't belong any more, Lin,” he miserably said at length, and took
+his way to Boston.
+
+The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly
+gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and
+a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a
+ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed
+to numb his good humor.
+
+When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs
+of approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization
+was utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and,
+galloping among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner
+took on that alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As
+the stage took him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty
+miles or so, shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual
+tones, “Hello, Lin, where've you been at?”
+
+At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+was hearty.
+
+“It took a week for my robes to catch up with me,” he said, laughing.
+Then, in a little while, “How was the East?”
+
+“First-rate,” said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+reverting--at any rate, just now--to their last talk at Green River, and
+the advice he had then given.
+
+“I trust your friends were all well?” he said.
+
+“I guess they was healthy enough,” said Lin.
+
+“I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city.”
+
+“Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect,” Lin replied.
+
+The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had
+no notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+
+“Mr. Bishop,” the cow-puncher said, “how was that about that fellow you
+told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks,
+and they--well there was his father saw him comin'”--He stopped,
+embarrassed.
+
+Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed
+them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just
+now, what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man
+gravely.
+
+“Have yu' got a Bible?” pursued Lin. “For, excuse me, but I'd like yu'
+to read that onced.”
+
+So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time
+at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone
+so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes
+from the bishop's face.
+
+“How long has that there been wrote?” he asked.
+
+He was told about how long.
+
+“Mr. Bishop,” said Lin, “I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry,
+down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen
+a man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the
+elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!”
+
+“Well,” said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles,
+“I am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been
+finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived.”
+
+Lin meditated. “I guess that could be,” he said. “Yes; after that yu've
+been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till
+lately, I guess that could be.”
+
+Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he
+was delivering the fulness of his heart to. “And come to think,” he
+concluded, “it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
+big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
+sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and
+it'll not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in
+a stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
+here” (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), “seein' it
+onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.
+Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River.”
+
+The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away
+from Lin. Knowing his man--for had he not seen many of this kind in his
+desert diocese?--he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the
+cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should
+now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would
+join it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River
+country. More business was over there, and better chances for a man to
+take up some land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort
+Washakie, the bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned
+several leaves down, carefully avoiding any page that related of
+miracles.
+
+“You need not read it through, you know,” he said, smiling; “just
+read where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts.
+Goodbye--and always come and see me.”
+
+The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards
+Wind River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving
+dot went over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the
+parade-ground, thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly
+soul, he shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+
+It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news.
+Meeting him to-day had been unforeseen--unforeseen and so pleasant that
+the thing had never come into my head until just now, after both of us
+had talked and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+
+I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's
+approach to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come
+precipitately out of the door.
+
+“I'm turruble pleased to see yu',” he had said, immediately.
+
+“What's happened?” said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+
+And he piteously explained: “Why, I've been here all alone since
+yesterday!”
+
+This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+
+Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock
+to him?
+
+“As to that,” replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, “when a man expects
+lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course.
+But when he has figured on finding company--say--” he broke off (and
+vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)--“when you're lucky enough to
+catch yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to
+yourself for hours.--You've not seen anything of Tommy?” he pursued with
+interest.
+
+I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over
+here with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the
+week's mail for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man
+to do but sit and sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could
+have endured that, but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and
+gone to Buffalo. It was circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered
+the money there must be in the circus business? Tommy had taken the
+outgoing letters early yesterday. Nobody had kept him waiting. By all
+rules he should have been back again last night. Maybe the stage was
+late reaching Powder River, and Tommy had had to lay over for it.
+Well, that would justify him. Far more likely he had gone to the circus
+himself and taken the mail with him. Tommy was no type of man for
+postmaster. Except drawing the allowance his mother in the East gave
+him first of every month, he had never shown punctuality that Lin could
+remember. Never had any second thoughts, and awful few first ones. Told
+bigger lies than a small man ought, also.
+
+“Has successes, though,” said I, wickedly.
+
+“Huh!” went on Mr. McLean. “Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+she”--Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive--“why, even that
+girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant
+he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of 'em
+retains interest in Tommy.”
+
+Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was
+glad to see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of
+Pitchstone Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad
+care of himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft
+in general. He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East
+by a route of his own discovering--and from his account of that journey
+it had proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the
+years of our friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the
+body he had always richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a
+season's absence and spoke those invariable words which all old friends
+upon this earth use to each other at meeting--“You haven't changed, you
+haven't changed at all!”--I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's
+boy soul. And so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the
+nature of Tommy (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him
+and took an intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I
+was than he, after all.
+
+There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved,
+and on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+firewood.
+
+“Look at those sorrowful toothpicks,” said he: “Tommy's work.”
+
+So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse
+way on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+yet.
+
+“It's good yu' come this forenoon,” Lin said to me. “I'd not have had
+the heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!”
+
+Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened
+a number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+the stew.
+
+“Tommy'll be hot about these,” said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs.
+“He don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods--pickled salmon and
+truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he
+showed me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he;
+'too bad my damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on
+me ever since Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail.
+'You swore too heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may
+have travelled half a mile by the time I'd found four nests.”
+
+I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly--and in Wyoming they were
+always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and
+I enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite
+established in my own soul at that time--and perhaps that is the reason
+why it is the only time I have ever known which I would live over again,
+those years when people said, “You are old enough to know better”--and
+one didn't care!
+
+Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+
+“What do you think of--” I began, and stopped.
+
+I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of
+digestion. I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it
+occurred to me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before
+this, had he known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began
+differently.
+
+“What is the most important event that can happen in this country?” said
+I.
+
+Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his
+back, dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one
+limp, open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over
+him.
+
+“I want to know what you consider the most important event that can
+happen in this country,” said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+clearness.
+
+The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth
+that I recognized to be meant for the word “War.” Then he rolled over so
+that his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+
+“I don't mean country in the sense of United States,” said I. “I mean
+this country here, and Bear Creek, and--well, the ranches southward for
+fifty miles, say. Important to this section.”
+
+“Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks,” said Lin. “Yu' might leave
+a man rest till then.”
+
+“I want your opinion,” said I.
+
+“Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion,” said Lin. “Seems like yu' merely
+figure on givin' me yours.”
+
+“Very well,” said I. “Very well, then.”
+
+I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for
+some minutes now.
+
+“I expect a railroad would be more important,” said Mr. McLean,
+persuasively, from the floor.
+
+“Than a rise in steers?” said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. “Oh
+yes. Yes, a railroad certainly would.”
+
+“It's got to be money, anyhow,” stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. “Money
+in some shape.”
+
+“How little you understand the real wants of the country!” said I,
+coming to the point. “It's a girl.”
+
+Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+
+“A girl,” I repeated. “A new girl coming to this starved country.”
+
+The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. “Well,”
+ said he, “yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
+with dinner and sleep.” He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
+expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
+entertainment, and palls. “Starved,” he presently muttered. “We are kind
+o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
+mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
+she is!” he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at
+me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. “Sidney, Nebraska.”
+
+I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her
+name--but his geography of her was accurate.
+
+One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+received a letter--no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all
+see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me.
+The letter was signed,
+
+“Ever your afectionite frend.
+
+                           “Katie Peck,”
+
+and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should
+like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. “Like to come and be
+like old times” filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers
+with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on
+Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she
+does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned,
+and old girls had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss
+Molly Wood (the Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in
+order the cabin and the children of the Taylors, while they were gone
+forty-five miles to the stage station to meet their guest.
+
+“Well,” said Lin, judicially, “Miss Wood is a lady.”
+
+“Yes,” said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+
+Lin thoughtfully continued. “She is--she's--she's--what are you laughin'
+at?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to,
+do you?”
+
+“Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed
+better, I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like
+gettin' kissed against their wishes--and you know it.”
+
+“But the point would rather seem to be that she--”
+
+“Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or
+I'll--I'll talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard
+me do yet.”
+
+“Impossible!” I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+
+“As to point--that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+right.” He ruminated for a moment. “She has about scared all the boys
+off, though,” he continued. “And that's what you get by being refined,”
+ he concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+
+“She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice,” said I. “He
+was there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk
+Creek. Didn't seem particularly frightened.”
+
+“Oh, well, nothin' alarms him--not even refinement,” said Mr. McLean,
+with his grin. “And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+would us poor punchers do?”
+
+“You have me cornered,” said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence,
+Lin on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon
+a scene my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring
+had passed over it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels
+undulated in emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this
+moment of to-day was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the
+dimples of the foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun
+melted among them. Around the doubling of the creek in the willow
+thickets glimmered skeined veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The
+stream poured turbulently away from the snows of the mountains behind
+us. It went winding in many folds across the meadows into distance
+and smallness, and so vanished round the great red battlement of wall
+beyond. Upon this were falling the deep hues of afternoon--violet, rose,
+and saffron, swimming and meeting as if some prism had dissolved and
+flowed over the turrets and crevices of the sandstone. Far over there I
+saw a dot move.
+
+“At last!” said I.
+
+Lin looked out of the window. “It's more than Tommy,” said he, at
+once; and his eyes made it out before mine could. “It's a wagon. That's
+Tommy's bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish,” Lin
+severely commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least
+be a homestretch.
+
+Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+best understood by cows--“Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!” But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets
+are worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can
+produce these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such
+sounds ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when
+the last cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already
+befallen) the yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle
+appeared to appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that
+was plain even at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch,
+after all. The bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned
+beside the wagon.
+
+“Showin' off,” remarked Lin. “Tommy's showin' off.” Suspicion crossed
+his face, and then certainty. “Why, we might have knowed that!” he
+exclaimed, in dudgeon. “It's her.” He hastened outside for a better
+look, and I came to the door myself. “That's what it is,” said he. “It's
+the girl. Oh yes. That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for.
+She come by the stage all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been
+too tired to travel, yu' see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his
+buckskins--they're four-year-olds. Or else--anyway, they laid over last
+night at Powder River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu'
+see, holdin' the mail back on us twenty-four hours--and that's your
+postmaster!”
+
+It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new
+girl, I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+
+Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade
+drew near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention
+focused upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear
+made a cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly
+chirruped to his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For
+Tommy wore upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in
+the Wild West. Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might
+have conducted a show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person
+before the eyes of princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake
+skin for a hat-band, he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of
+buckskin, and concluded with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there
+were things between his shirt and his heels, but all leather and deadly
+weapons. He had also a riata, a cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently
+employed these Spanish names for the objects. I wish that I had not lost
+Tommy's photograph in Rocky Mountain costume. You must understand that
+he was really pretty, with blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a graceful
+figure; and, besides, he had twenty-four hours' start of poor dusty Lin,
+whose best clothes were elsewhere.
+
+You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present
+us to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook
+the office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. “Good friends
+of mine, and gentlemen, both,” said he to Miss Peck; and to us, “A lady
+whose acquaintance will prove a treat to our section.”
+
+We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its
+being a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+
+“Well,” she exclaimed to Tommy, “I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+eggs you've spoke so much about.”
+
+I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+merely to exclaim, “Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been
+laying since Christmas!” and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy
+try to find all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore
+embarrassment to the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels
+of the wagon. He looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his
+features assumed a rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+
+“Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em.”
+
+“Well, if that ain't!” cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin
+as he now assisted her to descend.
+
+“All?” faltered Tommy. “Not the four nests?”
+
+“I've had three meals, yu' know,” Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+
+“I helped him,” said I. “Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+ham. Forgive us, please.”
+
+“I declare!” said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+eyes upon me. “You're a case, too, I expect.”
+
+But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot.
+In her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned
+back to Lin McLean. “You carry that,” said she, and gave the pleased
+cow-puncher a hand valise.
+
+“I'll look after your things, Miss Peck,” called Tommy, now springing
+down from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+
+“You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!” said the lady,
+but favoring him with a look from her large eyes. “There's plenty of
+gentlemen here.” With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the
+cabin, he following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear.
+“Well, I guess I'm about collapsed!” said she, vigorously, and sank upon
+one of Tommy's chairs.
+
+The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought
+a basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have
+done something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone
+to the stable with the horses.
+
+“Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?” inquired Mrs.
+Taylor.
+
+“Not now,” her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such
+a quick look at me.
+
+“We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine,” said Lin, gallantly. “Our
+climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead.”
+
+“You're a case, anyway!” exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+
+The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and,
+throwing one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with
+cheerful talk. She steadily watched him--his face sometimes, sometimes
+his lounging, masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to
+her, Taylor departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor,
+busy with supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at
+having her old friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+
+“Sickness has changed poor Katie some,” said she. “But I'm hoping she'll
+get back her looks on Bear Creek.”
+
+“She seems less feeble than I had understood,” I remarked.
+
+“Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired
+and down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But
+Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day
+she's real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends.”
+
+“How long will she stay?” I inquired.
+
+“Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as
+Taylor knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February,
+for you always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times.
+Katie'll be most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was
+sixteen the very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got
+some good man for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance,
+for there was a big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real
+scandalous, getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely
+at all. And so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the
+railroad eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with
+feeding them big trains day and night.”
+
+“A biscuit-shooter!” said I.
+
+Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. “Well,” said she then,
+“I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+stations.”
+
+I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+
+If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for,
+and will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you
+sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You
+discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through
+doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in
+a room of tables and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing
+attention, a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began
+immediately a swift chant. It hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow.
+In this inexpressible ceremony the name of every dish went hurtling into
+the next, telescoped to shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your
+Amazon in the middle, it dislocated her, and she merely went back and
+took a fresh start. The chant was always the same, but you never learned
+it. As soon as it began, your mind snapped shut like the upper berth
+in a Pullman. You must have uttered appropriate words--even a parrot
+will--for next you were eating things--pie, ham, hot cakes--as fast as
+you could. Twenty minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with
+your pile-driven stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is
+not dieted with greater velocity, and “biscuit-shooter” is a grand word.
+Very likely some Homer of the railroad yards first said it--for what
+men upon the present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we
+Americans?
+
+If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding
+in response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her
+into convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but
+allowed the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly
+now and then, “I declare!” and “If you ain't!” Lin was most certainly
+engaging, if that was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled
+upon her, and he half closed them now and then to look at her more
+effectively. I suppose she was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say
+that she was handsome in a large California-fruit style. They made a
+good-looking pair of animals. But it was in the presence of Tommy that
+Master Lin shone more energetically than ever, and under such shining
+Tommy was transparently restless. He tried, and failed, to bring
+the conversation his way, and took to rearranging the mail and the
+furniture.
+
+“Supper's ready,” he said, at length. “Come right in, Miss Peck; right
+in here. This is your seat--this one, please. Now you can see my fields
+out of the window.”
+
+“You sit here,” said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was
+between them. “Them's elegant!” she presently exclaimed to Tommy. “Did
+you cook 'em?”
+
+I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+
+“Indeed!” said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of
+his ranch, his potatoes, his horses. “And do you punch cattle, too?” she
+inquired of him.
+
+“Me?” said Tommy, slightingly; “gave it up years ago; too empty a
+life for me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own
+property”--Tommy swept his hand at the whole landscape--“he takes to
+more intellectual work.”
+
+“Lickin' postage-stamps,” Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+
+“You lick them and I cancel them,” answered the postmaster; and it does
+not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+
+“That's one on you,” she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she
+went for a little walk.
+
+“Katie was ever a tease,” said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. “She'll get
+used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,”
+ said he.
+
+Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was
+only when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men
+choosing various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a
+while. We lay in the blank--we had spread on some soft, dry sand in
+preference to the stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the
+contemplative influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+
+“Ever notice,” said he, “how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?”
+
+I did not feel sure that I had.
+
+“Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get
+to require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick.”
+
+I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+on.
+
+“Ever notice,” said he, “how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+get to increasing the dose?”
+
+“Yes,” said I.
+
+“Him roping six bears!” pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+“Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter
+other men'll get? Why's that, now?”
+
+I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+
+“Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they--”
+
+Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I
+sank beyond his reach.
+
+In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at
+the drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the
+daytime there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and
+hearing the news. There I heard how things were going everywhere,
+including Bear Creek.
+
+All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was
+a great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than
+the school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and
+showed it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town
+buying presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for
+a necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him.
+Too bad Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only
+yesterday to get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big
+joke on Lin McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew
+the location of, and Tommy got the bear.
+
+Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They
+had been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was
+in visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering
+and branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in
+camp. Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely
+watching Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way
+quite so much.
+
+“Lin,” said the Southerner, “I reckon you're failin'.”
+
+Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+
+“A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants,” pursued the Virginian.
+The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+young pride.
+
+“And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food,” his ingenious friend
+continued, slowly and gently.
+
+“I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name,” said Lin.
+
+“It ain't sca'cely hon'able,” went on the Virginian, “to waste away
+durin' the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If
+he is paid to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge
+or pull away.”
+
+“It's not many dodge my rope,” boasted Lin, imprudently.
+
+“Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her.”
+
+Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. “I'll
+improve,” said he, “if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so
+handy. Has she promised to be your sister yet?” he added.
+
+“Is that what they do?” inquired the Virginian, serenely. “I have never
+got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!”
+
+And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+
+But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory
+is to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted
+than most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he
+chose.
+
+“Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors',” he now told the
+camp. “He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General
+Miles, and General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in
+conversation, and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck
+appeared interested in his statements.”
+
+“What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?” demanded Lin.
+
+“Visitin' Miss Wood,” answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. “You'd ought to
+write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is
+gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and
+you would have the runnin' all to yourself.”
+
+“I'll fix him yet,” muttered Mr. McLean. “Him and his wars.”
+
+With that he rose and left us.
+
+The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was
+puzzled. Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman
+had been a transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty
+romances, where the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and
+moved on. Nor had his affairs been of the sort to teach a young man
+respect. I am putting it rather mildly.
+
+For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after
+that began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was
+a serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A
+man was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some
+day and found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No
+interest, no surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty
+owed him fifty dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the
+round-up, and he, Lin, would get his time and rustle altogether some
+five hundred dollars. Then there was his homestead claim on Box Elder,
+and the surveyors were coming in this fall. No better location for a
+home in this country than Box Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it
+needed was a house and ditches and buildings and fences, and to be
+planted with crops. Such chances and considerations should sober a
+man and make him careful what he did. “I'd take in Cheyenne on our
+wedding-trip, and after that I'd settle right down to improving Box
+Elder,” concluded Mr. McLean, suddenly.
+
+His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not
+remotely imagined such a step.
+
+“Marry her!” I screeched in dismay. “Marry her!”
+
+I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but
+I emphasized both thoroughly.
+
+“I didn't expect yu'd act that way,” said the lover. He dropped behind
+me fifty yards and spoke no more.
+
+Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+
+But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry
+or wounded--resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as
+of his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for
+a while how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon
+abandoned the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+
+“Lin,” I began, slowing my horse, “you must not think about what I
+said.”
+
+“I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects,” said he, and slowed his own
+horse.
+
+“Oh, look here!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Well?” said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+
+“Astonishment makes a man say anything,” I proceeded. “And I'll say
+again you're too good for her--and I'll say I don't generally believe in
+the wife being older than the husband.”
+
+“What's two years?” said Lin.
+
+I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation
+of the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+estimate her own age.
+
+“She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month,” said Lin, with
+sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. “I promised her
+a bear-skin.”
+
+“Yes,” said I, “I heard about that in Buffalo.”
+
+Lin's face grew dusky with anger. “No doubt yu' heard about it,” said
+he. “I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told
+the truth to any of 'em--but her.” He looked at me with a certain
+hesitation. “I think I will,” he continued. “I don't mind tellin' you.”
+
+He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+of rope that hung on his saddle.
+
+“She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come
+home though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to
+see what she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start
+whining, and she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and
+lifts up a cub and holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a
+person. And she rubbed her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped
+her, and she cuffed the cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away
+they starts rolling all three of 'em! I watched that for a long while.
+That big thing just nursed and played with them little cubs, beatin' em
+for a change onced in a while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd
+sit up solemn and look all around so life-like that I near busted. Why,
+how was I goin' to spoil that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for
+I'd have hated to have Mrs. Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She
+claimed I was scared to shoot.”
+
+“After you had told her why it was?” said I.
+
+“Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has
+the skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+Tommy.”
+
+“But since she has taken you?” said I.
+
+“She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy.”
+
+I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand
+also the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these
+differed from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand
+was why Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque,
+a career in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a
+present lacking context--indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy
+would win!
+
+“Lin,” said I, “I'm backing him.”
+
+“Back away!” said he. “Tommy can please a woman--him and his blue
+eyes--but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better
+than he knows about killin' Injuns.”
+
+“Did you hear about the Crows?” said I.
+
+“About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+believed any Crows--” he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+
+“What's the matter now?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, nothing.” He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+extent. “What made yu' say that to me?” he asked, presently.
+
+“Say what?”
+
+“About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better.”
+
+“I don't.”
+
+“Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!”
+
+“Colts ought not to marry,” said I.
+
+“Sure!” said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the
+Virginian's black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next
+the Taylors' that Lin changed the lively course of thought that was
+evidently filling his mind.
+
+“Tell yu',” said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to
+the black horse, “for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the
+same. She likes him dangling round her so earnest--him that no body ever
+saw dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does
+he get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the
+Miss Woods of this world,” he added, defiantly--“except at long range.”
+
+At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her--whether
+the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company;
+whatever had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair
+looked curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and
+her cheeks were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood
+talking sweetly to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was
+no doubt that he had been “raised good enough” to appreciate her, no
+matter what had been his raising!
+
+Lin greeted every one jauntily. “How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+Tommy?” said he. “Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path.”
+
+“I declare!” said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and
+then he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, “I hadn't been goin'
+to mention it to the ladies until it was right sure.”
+
+“You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck,” said Tommy. “There's lots of men
+here.”
+
+“Who's afraid?” said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+“Oh,” said Lin, “maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh.”
+
+“Of course,” said Tommy.
+
+“Hello, Tommy!” called Taylor from the lane. “Your horse has broke his
+rein and run down the field.”
+
+Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+
+“I must be cooking supper now,” said Katie, shortly.
+
+“I'll stir for yu',” said Lin, grinning at her.
+
+“Come along then,” said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+
+Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+Virginian, and she looked at me.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, “I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+wasn't new any more it might become dull!”
+
+“Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either,” said I.
+
+Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. “But mightn't it become
+just--just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very--determined,
+you know?”
+
+“Only one is determined,” said the Virginian
+
+Molly looked inquiring.
+
+“Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to.”
+
+“Dear me, what a notion!”
+
+“No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy--well, Tommy is considered harmless, ma'am.
+A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never let
+Tommy get ahaid of him that way.”
+
+“It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!” exclaimed Molly.
+
+“Why, ma'am,” said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+“where is any countin' without some love?”
+
+“Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?”
+
+“I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference
+between thinkin' and feelin', ma'am.”
+
+I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her
+cheeks. But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+
+“You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+the jiste!”
+
+“All cow-punchers--” I attempted to resume.
+
+“Quit now, Lin McLean,” shouted the voice, “or I'll put yus through that
+window, and it shut.”
+
+“Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face.
+And now I'm going to quit and cough back.”
+
+“Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?” inquired the Virginian
+as Molly rose. “You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh.”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Molly, blithely. “And you'll come?” she added to me.
+
+But I was on the Virginian's side. “I must look after my horse,” said I,
+and went down to the corral.
+
+Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon.
+The canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where
+I walked the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where
+the thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across
+the silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he
+and General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when
+supper-time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account
+to Mrs. Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he
+was saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+
+“But when you get old?” said she.
+
+“We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am,” said he, simply.
+“But I have a reason, and I am saving.”
+
+“Give me the flowers,” said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on
+the table as Lin came hurrying out.
+
+“I've told her,” said he to the Southerner and me, “that I've asked her
+twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you.” He took the
+Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I
+began to discern something quite definite at supper.
+
+“Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this,” he
+said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+
+“Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?” said the Virginian.
+
+“Chap come into the round-up this afternoon,” said Lin. “But he was
+rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square.”
+
+“Of course they wouldn't,” said Tommy, haughtily.
+
+“Oh, there's nothing in it,” said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+
+“Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?”
+
+Mrs. Taylor had not.
+
+“Lin,” said the Virginian, “did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?”
+
+“You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in
+the mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good--not in her class o'
+sports, smugglin' and such.”
+
+“I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption,” said the
+Virginian.
+
+“Talking of mountains,” said Tommy, “this range here used to be a great
+place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the
+red sons-of-guns.”
+
+“You bet,” said Lin. “Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+and quit him, too?”
+
+“I reckon,” replied the Virginian, “that the bull-fighter wore better.”
+
+“Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin',” said Lin. “My! but I'd like
+to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened.”
+
+The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made
+of the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that
+Tommy had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his
+campaigns. But when the hour came for those visitors who were not
+spending the night to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me,
+and I noticed the Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed
+diversion.
+
+“Don't seem to make anything of it,” whispered Taylor to Tommy, “but the
+ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck.”
+
+“Why, I'll just explain--” began Tommy.
+
+“Don't,” whispered Lin, joining us. “Yu' know how women are. Once they
+take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+him and me” (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) “must go back to
+camp, for we're on second relief.”
+
+“And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+house,” said Taylor.
+
+“In that case,” said Tommy, “I--”
+
+“Yu' see,” said Lin, “they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+nights ago.”
+
+“It ain't!” cried Tommy.
+
+“Why, of course it ain't,” drawled the ingenious Lin. “But that's what I
+say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from
+our own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these
+nervous notions.”
+
+“Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+Riverside,” repeated Taylor, “but--”
+
+“But just kind of stay here,” said Lin.
+
+“I will!” exclaimed Tommy. “Of course, I'm glad to oblige.”
+
+I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than
+its results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He
+was to be kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they
+proposed to visit his empty cabin and play tricks--but that would be
+too childish, even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his
+occasional partner in mischief.
+
+“In spite of the Crows,” I satirically told the ladies, “I shall sleep
+outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season.”
+
+The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid
+a hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the
+galloping horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and
+crossed to her little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in
+that blessed country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+
+I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long,
+wild yell now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no
+pistol--nothing. In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought
+was “House! House!” and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to
+the cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I
+understood. I saw the Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw
+his teeth as he smiled. I hastened to my blankets, and returned more
+decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round
+the cabin, crazy with their youth. The door was opened, and Taylor
+courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He fired at the sky
+immediately.
+
+“B' gosh!” he roared. “That's one.” He fired again. “Out and at 'em.
+They're running.”
+
+At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots
+by the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted
+and joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about
+with them, helping the din.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Taylor!” said a voice. “I didn't think it of you.” It was Molly
+Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+
+“Stop, friends!” said Taylor, gasping. “She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+I'd hate to have Bobbie--”
+
+“Speak to your papa,” said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+
+“Well, I'll be gol-darned,” said Taylor, surveying his costume, “if Lin
+McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!”
+
+“Where has Tommy got?” said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+“Didn't yus see him?” said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word
+in all this.
+
+We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+
+There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+
+“Well,” murmured the Virginian to himself, “if I could have foresaw, I'd
+not--it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self.”
+
+He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything,
+and presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent
+cabin, mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the
+night at Riverside, after all.
+
+Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+one when you think of it.
+
+I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian
+how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
+bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the
+peace. She was astride the horse he had brought for her.
+
+“Yes, he beat Tommy,” said the Virginian. “Some folks, anyway, get what
+they want in this hyeh world.”
+
+From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than
+Tommy.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+
+Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there
+was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this
+that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+fertility of the soil--when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+made--with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying
+to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+here--with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that
+anything could fly--with wings. Then we would lead such a man out and
+show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if he
+was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him
+the glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+meet him.
+
+“For purposes of amusement,” he said, “I'll admit anything you claim
+for this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?”
+
+“You shall,” I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+something to him “for purposes of amusement.”
+
+“You fellows come up with me to my office,” said the Governor. “I'll
+look at my mail, and show you round.” So we went with him through the
+heat and sun.
+
+“What's that?” inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+
+“That is our park,” said I. “Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi--” I checked
+myself.
+
+But Ogden said “with irrigation” for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+come.
+
+We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his
+letters over.
+
+“Here you are, Ogden,” said he. “Here's the way we hump ahead out here.”
+ And he read us the following:
+
+                           “MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188--
+
+“Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+
+“Sir,--Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad
+to furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully
+in Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover,
+as I said, merely my necessary expenses--say $350 (three hundred and
+fifty dollars)--for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity of
+rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction
+of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+
+                           “I am, respectfully yours,
+
+                                “Robert Hilbrun”
+
+“Will the Legislature do it?” inquired Ogden in good faith.
+
+The Governor laughed boisterously. “I guess it wouldn't be
+constitutional,” said he.
+
+“Oh, bother!” said Ogden.
+
+“My dear man,” the Governor protested, “I know we're new, and our women
+vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would
+fly right into my back hair.” Barker was also new as Governor.
+
+“Do you have Senators here too?” said Ogden, raising his eyebrows.
+“What do they look like? Are they females?” And the Governor grew more
+boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+men were certainly “out of sight”. Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+
+“I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself,” he said.
+
+“That's an idea!” cried the Governor. “Nothing unconstitutional about
+that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars--”
+
+“I'll put up a hundred,” said Ogden, promptly. “I'm out for a Western
+vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen.”
+
+The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help
+of some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised.
+“He won't care,” said the Governor, “whether it's a private enterprise
+or a municipal step, so long as he gets his money.”
+
+“He won't get it, I'm afraid,” said Ogden. “But if he succeeds in
+tempting Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you
+call those people there on the horses?”
+
+We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and
+looking out over the plain toward Fort Russell. “That is a cow-puncher
+and his bride,” I answered, recognizing the couple.
+
+“Real cow-puncher?”
+
+“Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean.”
+
+“Real bride?”
+
+“I'm afraid so.”
+
+“She's riding straddle!” exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+glasses. “Why do you object to their union being holy?”
+
+I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+precipitately and against my advice.
+
+“I suppose he knew his business,” observed Ogden.
+
+“That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her--and
+know him.”
+
+Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at
+meeting with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked
+at her, and I instantly knew that Lin--the fool!--had confided to her my
+disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+
+“Good-day, Mr. McLean,” said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his
+horse.
+
+“How're are yu', doctor,” said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+at Drybone. “Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean,” pursued the husband.
+
+The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to
+a Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at
+her, extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her
+big, dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+
+“I say,” Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+flesh image, “I'm glad I came.” The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man
+that wore them.
+
+“Well,” said he, “I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in
+town? Circus come yet?”
+
+“No,” said I. “Are you going to make a long stay?”
+
+The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. “Till
+we're tired of it, I guess,” said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house
+lady, the biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty,
+irrepressible spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him,
+and now she was going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at
+her too, thoughtfully.
+
+“Say, Lin,” I said, “if you stay here long enough you'll see a big
+show.” And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I
+told him of the rain-maker.
+
+“Shucks!” said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+entertained at our venture. “Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me
+come in”; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised,
+he was hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+
+“Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess,” spoke the
+image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I
+know that Lin did. The image continued: “Some folks and their money are
+soon parted”--she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I
+was sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable
+opinion of her--“but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged
+ap!” This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says
+the husband immediately started off on a run.
+
+At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+railroad ties, exclaiming: “Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+came.”
+
+“That's who she is!” said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+once. “I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!”
+ he continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated “Bigamy!” “Lots of
+them marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on
+to a new man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on--”
+
+“One moment, I beg,” said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. “What does the
+law--”
+
+“Law?” said the Governor. “Look at that place!” He swept his hand
+towards the vast plains and the mountains. “Ninety-five thousand square
+miles of that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen
+yet on top of the Rocky Mountains.”
+
+“I see,” said the New-Yorker. “But--but--well let A and B represent
+first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does A know
+about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?”
+
+“Can't say,” the Governor answered, jovially. “Can't generalize. Depends
+on heaps of things--love--money--Did you go to college? Well, let A
+minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared--”
+
+“Oh, come to lunch,” I said. “Barker, do you really know the first
+husband is alive?”
+
+“Wasn't dead last winter.” And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss
+Katie Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was
+wooed and won by a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder,
+a bar-tender, a freight hand, and was then hauling poles for the
+government. During his necessary absences from home she, too, went
+out-of-doors. This he often discovered, and would beat her, and she
+would then also beat him. After the beatings one of them would always
+leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in small-talk until
+Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. “Lusk,” said the Governor,
+finishing his story, “cried around the saloons for a couple of days, and
+then went on hauling poles for the government, till at last he said
+he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was round
+Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay
+with Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+McLean.”
+
+“You'll notice,” said the Governor, “how she has got him under in three
+weeks. Old hand, you see.”
+
+“Poor Lin!” I said.
+
+“Lucky, I call him,” said the Governor. “He can quit her.”
+
+“Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?”
+
+“She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn
+pretty quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip.
+Hello! here comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New
+York, Mr. Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden.” The
+Governor's eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+
+“Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+acquaintance,” said the signal-service officer.
+
+“Jode, when is it going to rain?” said the Governor, anxiously.
+
+Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He
+has the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in--I think
+he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton Manigault
+Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then, but his
+health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black; his
+face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a
+spout--the same narrow size all the way down--and his voice was as
+dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had
+constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with
+his dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted
+apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much
+satisfaction also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he
+came to see that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was
+published, and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen,
+along with other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and
+he passed his careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+
+He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina
+impressiveness. “There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing
+pressure,” he said.
+
+“Well, that's what I thought,” said the joyous Governor, “so I'm going
+to whoop her up.”
+
+“What do you expect to whoop up, sir?”
+
+“Atmosphere, and all that,” said the Governor. “Whole business has got
+to get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker.”
+
+“Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir,” said Jode, who enjoyed Barker
+as some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we
+had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter
+had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers
+with him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position.
+“Have your joke, sir,” he said, waving a thin, clean hand, “but I
+decline to meet him.”
+
+“Hilbrun?” said the Governor, staring.
+
+“If that's his name--yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and the
+Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow.”
+
+“Glory!” said the Governor. “Well, I suppose not. I see your point,
+Jode. I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure.
+All very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow--too
+slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+does its business by is out of date.”
+
+“I am quite serious, sir,” said Jode. “And let me express my
+gratification that you do see my point.” So we changed the subject.
+
+Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond
+those who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed
+curiosity about Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in
+the street that he was disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the
+enterprise. “But the boys would fly right at it and stay with it if the
+round-up was near town, you bet,” said he.
+
+He was walking alone. “How's Mrs. McLean to-day?” I inquired.
+
+“She's well,” said Lin, turning his eye from mine. “Who's your friend
+all bugged up in English clothes?”
+
+“About as good a man as you,” said I, “and more cautious.”
+
+“Him and his eye-glasses!” said the sceptical puncher, still looking
+away from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor.
+That excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his
+teeth shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+
+“Telegram from Hilbrun,” he shouted; “be here to-morrow”; and he
+hastened up.
+
+“Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+private,” added Ogden. “Great, isn't it?”
+
+“You bet!” said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+excitement mollified Mr. McLean. “Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?” said
+he.
+
+“Never. Have you?”
+
+Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+
+“We're going to show the telegram to Jode,” said the Governor; and he
+and Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+
+“Well, I must be getting along myself,” said Lin; but he continued
+walking slowly with me. “Where're yu' bound?” he said.
+
+“Nowhere in particular,” said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a
+little more.
+
+“You're going to meet the train to-morrow?” said he.
+
+“The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?”
+
+“Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?”
+
+“Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years.”
+
+“Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's
+the rule. Don't you?”
+
+“I shouldn't wonder.”
+
+“I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?”
+
+“No. But it'll be fun to see him try.”
+
+“Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow.”
+
+“See you to-morrow, Lin.”
+
+He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure.
+A hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after
+him, pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the
+club, telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had
+inquired for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that
+he had lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying “I told
+you so” to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had
+not come so home to me until our little walk together just now along the
+boards.
+
+At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty--a
+particular drink, the Allston cocktail. “It's the bitters that does the
+trick,” he was saying, but saw me and called out: “You ought to have
+been with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read
+it through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with
+his anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get
+out he sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so
+I said, 'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And
+Jode, he quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your
+despatch is genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!” And
+the Governor slapped his knee. “Why, he's so set against Hilbrun,” he
+continued, “I guess if he knew of something he could explode to stop
+rain he'd let her fly!”
+
+“No, he wouldn't,” said I. “He'd not consider that honorable.”
+
+“That's so,” the Governor assented. “Jode'll play fair.”
+
+It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise--a game between a
+well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan.
+And it was the charlatan had our sympathy--as all charlatans, whether
+religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary
+and the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the
+cart, and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned
+out an unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not
+remember afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it
+was a hot day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he
+put into the cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance
+to the eye. He desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his
+apparatus in the building provided for him; and we set out for it at
+once. It was an untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant
+might cut a hole in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for
+the first time--a tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak
+mouth. “This is Mr. Lusk,” said the rain-maker; and we shook hands,
+Ogden and I exchanging a glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill
+Street--or Capitol Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has
+grown fuller of pomp and emptier of prosperity--and I thought we made an
+unusual procession: the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the
+way to the barn; the cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his
+packed-up mysteries; McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious
+bigamy; and in the rear, Odgen nudging me in the ribs. That it was the
+correct Lusk we had with us I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy,
+vacant appearance, strong-bodied and shiftless--the sort of man to weary
+of one trade and another, and make a failure of wife beating between
+whiles. In Twenty-fourth Street--the town's uttermost rim--the Governor
+met us, and stared at Lusk. “Christopher!” was his single observation;
+but he never forgets a face--cannot afford to, now that he is in
+politics; and, besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a
+man to whom you owe ten dollars.
+
+“So you've quit hauling poles?” said the Governor.
+
+“Nothing in it, sir,” said Lusk.
+
+“Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?” asked the
+rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+
+“What! going to throw your bombs through it?” said the Governor, smiling
+heartily.
+
+But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system,
+but a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. “Not that
+the bomb don't produce first-class results at times and under
+circumstances,” he said, “but it's uncertain and costly.”
+
+The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told
+us was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+hole, which saved delay. “And what day would you prefer the shower?”
+ said Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+
+“Any day would do,” the Governor said.
+
+This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+business to detain him from witnessing the shower--though it seemed to
+me that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable
+as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry
+and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+
+I saw a sorry spectacle in the street--the bridegroom and the bride
+shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a
+scarlet parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of
+purchase on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with
+splendor, like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as
+well have been behind, and his bearing was so different from his
+wonted happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+“Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk.” But it was “Mrs. McLean” I said, of course.
+She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, “Come on, Lin,”
+ something like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a
+good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, “It takes a woman to know
+what to buy for house-keepin,”; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared
+him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in
+keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider
+to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were
+only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but
+one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs.
+Lusk, perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant
+rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the
+north corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at
+all, haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
+
+On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing.
+The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the
+barn, snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be
+chlorine, the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part
+responsible; and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The
+world was as still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever;
+and the sky over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours.
+This tenacity in the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official
+pleasure. We could tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor
+reminded him that no rain was contracted for until the next day, he
+mentioned that the approach of a storm is something that modern science
+is able to ascertain long in advance; and he bade us come to his office
+whenever we pleased, and see for ourselves what science said. This was,
+at any rate, something to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him
+about five. Lin McLean joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering
+alone in the street, and he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on
+friends. I saw that he did not know how to spend the short recess or
+holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the society of others, and
+with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He had become converted
+to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing
+this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the
+signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the
+careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+
+“A hair hygrometer,” he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it.
+“The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of
+a prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the
+divided arc of--”
+
+“What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?” called out the Governor,
+who had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the
+tubes and dials. “What will this one do?” he asked, and poked at a wet
+paper disc. But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had
+to do with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention
+wandered, and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly
+revolved and set a number of dial hands going different ways. “Hi!” said
+the Governor, delighted. “Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air
+velocity in feet. Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What
+you'll need, Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes.”
+
+“I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor,” Jode retorted at once.
+“And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+there.” He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+crystal. “An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen,”
+ Jode continued--though none of us would have said anything like
+that--“but unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+corroborated, as you will find you must admit.” Jode's voice was almost
+threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers;
+I caught the fleeting sound of words like “meniscus” and “terrestrial
+minimum thermometer,” and I nodded punctually when Jode went through
+some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand--a
+series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service
+officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date
+of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible.
+“And I tell you,” Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, “there's
+no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,”--he was shrieking
+jubilantly--“there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!”
+
+We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. “Gee whiz!” said
+the Governor. “I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use.”
+
+We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+scientist. “That's what they all say,” he said. “I'll do my talking
+to-morrow.”
+
+“If any of you gentlemen, or your friends,” said Assistant Lusk,
+stepping up, “feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to
+accommodate you.”
+
+“What do yu' want this evenin'?” said Lin McLean, promptly.
+
+“Five to one,” said Lusk.
+
+“Go yu' in twenties,” said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived
+this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out--or
+what of it still survived his bride's shopping. “Will you hold stakes,
+doctor?” he said to the Governor.
+
+But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five
+to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and
+then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered
+our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next
+morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a
+universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes
+instantly whipped out his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and
+disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but
+was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+
+Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze
+anywhere, and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was
+freely offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so
+she might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed
+husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad
+of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented
+their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that
+it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
+
+The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside
+the hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube,
+the possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the
+extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one
+restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella.
+In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs.
+Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast
+progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the
+well-known legend, “I am somewhat of a liar myself.” And all the while
+the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the
+certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came
+from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with
+a chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new
+indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden,
+padded, dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They
+blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all,
+and ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those
+rapid, unconvincing weather changes of the drama.
+
+Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things
+on earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized
+upon Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger
+and acquaintance: “It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me”' And the
+crowd would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as
+he went proclaiming to the world. “A failure, sir! The fellow's an
+impostor, as I well knew. It's no half-inch!” Which was true.
+
+“What have you got to say to that?” we asked Hilbrun, swarming around
+him.
+
+“If you'll just keep cool,” said he--“it's only the first instalment. In
+about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest.”
+
+Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences
+and sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down
+door-steps, women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the
+chattering Jode flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge
+Burrage apostrophized Providence in his front yard, with the
+postmaster's label still pinned to his back. Nobody minded the sluicing
+downpour--this second instalment was much more of a thing than the
+first--and Hilbrun alone kept a calm exterior--the face of the man who
+lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an impressive glance at the audience.
+Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success I saw him put
+a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy
+leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate
+and proceeded toward him, extending the hand of congratulation. “Mr.
+Hilbrun,” said he, “I am Judge Burrage--the Honorable T. Coleman
+Burrage--and I will say that I am most favorably impressed with your
+shower.”
+
+“His shower!” yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+
+“Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?” said Lin McLean, grinning.
+
+“I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen,” said Jode, ignoring the
+facetious puncher.
+
+“You're mistaken,” said Hilbrun, sharply.
+
+“It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch,” said Lin.
+
+“If he's short he don't get his money,” said some ignoble subscriber
+
+“Yes, he will,” said the Governor, “or I'm a short. He's earned it.”
+
+“You bet “' said Lin. “Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+doctor, I'll chip--Shucks!” Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket;
+he remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now
+possessed possibly two dollars in silver, all told. “I can't chip
+in, doctor,” he said. “That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's
+filling up on the prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest
+show I've ever saw. You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!” And Lin
+clapped the rain-maker on the shoulder, exulting. He had been too well
+entertained to care what he had in his pocket, and his wife had not yet
+occurred to him.
+
+They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under
+half an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we
+stood talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to
+Jode, saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously
+with these, riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out
+the rain had flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from
+as far as thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a
+cloud. It staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” said the rain-maker, “I'm packed up, and my train'll
+be along soon--would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?”
+
+Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely
+performed his side of the contract.
+
+“I think different, gentlemen,” said he. “But I'll unpack and let that
+train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay
+me” (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the
+fence) “I'll flood your town.”
+
+In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in
+the total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards
+and precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+over.
+
+“I'm obliged,” said Hilbrun, simply.
+
+“If I had foreseen, gentlemen,” said Jode, too deeply grieved now to
+feel anger, “that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing
+your money through this--this absurd occurrence, I would have declined
+to help you. It becomes my duty,” he continued, turning coldly to
+the inebriated Lusk, “to hand this to you, sir.” And the assistant
+lurchingly stuffed his stakes away.
+
+“It's worth it,” said Lin. “He's welcome to my cash.”
+
+“What's that you say, Lin McLean?” It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+surged to the front.
+
+“I'm broke. He's got it. That's all,” said Lin, briefly.
+
+“Broke! You!” She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+preliminary howl.
+
+At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. “It's my darling
+Kate,” he said. “Why, Kate!”
+
+The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean;
+for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her
+first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin
+was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our
+benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the
+second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish,
+tearful, and affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian
+angel, indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous
+defiance at Lin. “Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you
+sage-brush bigamist!” is what the marvelous female said.
+
+“Bigamist?” repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. “I ain't,” he said to
+Ogden and me. “I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her.”
+
+“Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+before ever I come acrosst yus.”
+
+“You and him?” murmured the puncher.
+
+“Her and me,” whimpered Lusk. “Sidney.” He sat up with a limp, confiding
+stare at everybody.
+
+“Sidney who?” said Lin.
+
+“No, no,” corrected Lusk, crossly--“Sidney, Nebraska.”
+
+The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice.
+But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+
+“Who are yu', anyway--when yu' ain't drunk?” demanded Lin.
+
+“He's as good a man as you, and better,” snorted the guardian angel.
+“Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find.”
+
+“Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska--” Lin began.
+
+“No, no,” corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew--“Jim.”
+
+“Good-bye, gentlemen,” said the rain-maker. “That's the west-bound. I'm
+perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+Salt Lake City.”
+
+“You are?” shouted Lin McLean. “Him and Jim's going to work it again!
+For goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!”
+
+At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten,
+and ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his
+duties should detain him. But Jode went!
+
+“Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen,” said he to Ogden, McLean,
+and me, “and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure.”
+
+“Which way are yu' bettin'?” Lin asked.
+
+“With my principles, sir,” answered the little signal-service officer.
+
+“I expect I ain't got any,” said the puncher. “It's Jim I'm backin' this
+time.”
+
+“See here,” said I; “I want to talk to you.” We went into another car,
+and I did.
+
+“And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?” the
+puncher said.
+
+“Do you mean I ought to have--”
+
+“Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all
+the same. Yu' have good friends, and all that.” He looked out of the
+window. “Laramie already!” he commented, and got out and walked by
+himself on the platform until we had started again. “Yu' have good
+friends,” he pursued, settling himself so his long legs were stretched
+and comfortable, “and they tell yu' things, and you tell them things.
+And when it don't make no particular matter one way or the other, yu'
+give 'em your honest opinion and talk straight to 'em, and they'll
+come to you the same way. So that when yu're ridin' the range alone
+sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things over on top maybe of some
+dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about some fellow yu' know mighty
+well, 'There's a man is a good friend of mine.' And yu' mean it. And
+it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced in a while they're bound
+to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the man then--your good
+friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be. Standin' off, keepin' his
+mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail out. If he tried to show
+it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks! Circumstances have showed
+me the trail this time, you bet!” And the puncher's face, which had been
+sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly hand on my knee.
+
+“The trail's pretty simple,” said I.
+
+“You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu',” said Lin, with the air
+of having made a discovery, “when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs
+in this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his
+dyin'. I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell
+their wives.”
+
+“Never was married,” said I.
+
+“Well--no more was I. Let's go to bed.” And Lin shook my hand, and gave
+me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+
+At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western
+holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against
+rain--only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free.
+Indeed; the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine
+have a nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the
+sights: floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of
+the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of saints in robes speaking from heaven
+to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm-hand, and in
+the street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the
+new--or perhaps I should say the original--husband and wife.
+
+“She's corralled Sidney's cash!” said the delighted Lin. “He can't bet
+nothing on this shower.”
+
+And then, after all, this time--it didn't rain!
+
+Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased
+a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went
+somewhere else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the
+money, retained him with her.
+
+“Good luck to yu', Sidney!” said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+since Cheyenne. “I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married.” He
+paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that
+she threw after him.
+
+Jode also felt “a heap better.” Legitimate science had triumphed.
+To-day, most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a
+coincidence. South Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin
+the few dollars that I had lent the puncher.
+
+“And what will you do now?” I said to Lin.
+
+“Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+keep a single man.”
+
+
+
+A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+
+The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled
+it between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew
+absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with
+a slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be
+more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children
+to whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had
+put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom,
+and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely
+planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround
+him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed
+from a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into
+town from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the
+others, rounded the Capitol's enclosure, and, approaching with radiant
+countenance leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again
+greeted him with a hilarious “Hello, Doc!”
+
+Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several
+years, hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and,
+inquiring who might be the other riders behind, was told that they were
+Shorty, Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. “And dandies to
+hit town with,” Mr. McLean added. “Red-hot.”
+
+“I am acquainted with them,” assented his Excellency.
+
+“We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks,” the cow-puncher continued,
+“makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every
+day. So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to
+feed high.”
+
+Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+their coming rites.
+
+“We've soured on scenery,” he finished, in his drastic idiom. “We're
+sick of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time.”
+
+“Call on me,” remarked the Governor, cheerily, “when you're ready for
+bromides and sulphates.”
+
+“I ain't box-headed no more,” protested Mr. McLean; “I've got maturity,
+Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+That's my rule.”
+
+“That your rule, too?” inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye,
+and Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+expressionless upon their horses.
+
+“We ain't talkin', we're waitin',” observed Chalkeye; and the three
+cynics smiled amiably.
+
+“Well, Doc, see yu' again,” said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or
+came up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+unsuspecting Governor.
+
+“What's your hurry?” said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty
+manner. “Come along with me.”
+
+“Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?”
+
+“Christmasing,” replied Fate.
+
+“Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?”
+
+“Yes; I'm buying toys.”
+
+“Toys! You? What for?”
+
+“Oh, some kids.”
+
+“Yourn?” screeched Lin, precipitately.
+
+His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he
+held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. “Not mine, I'm happy
+to say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me
+uncle, and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think
+it's a girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these
+little folks at Christmas they'd be wondering--not the kids, they just
+break your toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder--'What's
+the matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on
+us?'--that's where the strain comes!” he broke off, facing Mr. McLean
+with another spacious laugh.
+
+But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran
+on exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
+intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+
+“That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a
+stick, and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too
+much, and you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie,
+and--well, I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in
+luck. Christmas don't trouble a chap fixed like you.”
+
+Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+
+“A chap fixed like you!” The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. “No,
+sure.” He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+going down the road. “That's a new idea--Christmas,” he murmured, for it
+was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+his first long trousers.
+
+“Comes once a year pretty regular,” remarked the prosperous Governor.
+“Seems often when you pay the bill.”
+
+“I haven't made a Christmas gift,” pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
+“not for--for--Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know anybody
+that has any right to look for such a thing from me.” This was indeed a
+new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.
+
+“Gee whiz!” said Barker, briskly, “there goes twelve o'clock. I've got
+to make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!”
+
+His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops
+with the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and
+he struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall
+some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made
+him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently
+watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his
+speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they
+took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and
+wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and
+met face to face with Mr. McLean.
+
+“The boys are seein' after my horse,” Lin rapidly began, “and I've got
+to meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu'
+see, and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--” Here
+Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. “Doc,
+I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know.”
+
+The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind,
+and was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
+selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a
+couple of dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an
+imperfect honesty that he said, “You'll help me a heap.”
+
+And Lin, quite sincere, replied, “Thank yu'.”
+
+So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man
+has been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall;
+the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as
+young as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known
+the cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without
+breeding contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder
+and drew him among the petticoats and toys.
+
+Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin
+saw them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations
+of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with
+that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal
+human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's
+brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children
+escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch
+and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
+rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
+sound of musical boxes.
+
+Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
+and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
+knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
+must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
+much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
+ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying
+that his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a
+step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily
+have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence,
+waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some
+infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the
+frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could
+make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and
+forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if
+he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while
+these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of
+him, he was locked outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural
+press of customers, long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing
+and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished,
+he was ready to go on to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean.
+He found him obliterated in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa
+Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
+
+“He looks livelier than you do,” said the hearty Governor. “'Fraid it's
+been slow waiting.”
+
+“No,” replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. “No, I guess not.”
+
+This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+“You never did lie to me,” he said, “long as I've known you. Well, never
+mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now.”
+
+At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. “Say Doc,” said he, “what do
+yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?”
+
+“A big practice--big enough to interfere with my politics.”
+
+“What else? Things and truck, I mean.”
+
+“Oh--nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like
+me.”
+
+“Don't they? Don't they?”
+
+“Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?”
+
+“Well--”
+
+“I believe you're in earnest!” cried his Excellency. “That's simply
+rich!” Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town “heeled
+for a big time,” finds that presents are all the rage, and must
+immediately give somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous
+Frontier! So thought the good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial
+misconception. “My dear fellow,” he added, meaning as well as possible,
+“I don't want you to spend your money on me.”
+
+“I've got plenty all right,” said Lin, shortly.
+
+“Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with
+you. You didn't expect anything from me?”
+
+“That ain't--that don't--”
+
+“There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+Here's our shop.” They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+counters. “Now,” pursued the Governor, “this is for a very particular
+friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?”
+
+They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision
+after one look. “That,” said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound,
+or, at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned
+that there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+
+The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. “I know
+that Tennyson is what she--is what's wanted,” he muttered; and, feeling
+himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture
+he took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand,
+found himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and
+the cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all
+people. Barker picked it up and gave it back. “No, no, no!” he said,
+mirthful over his own inclination to be annoyed; “you can't do that. I'm
+just as much obliged, Lin,” he added.
+
+“Just as a loan, Doc--some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash.”
+
+A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp
+young lady was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily
+for Tennyson's expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his
+discountenanced savings back into his clothes. Making haste to leave
+the book department of this shop, they regained a mutual ease, and
+the Governor became waggish over Lin's concern at being too rich. He
+suggested to him the list of delinquent taxpayers and the latest census
+from which to select indigent persons. He had patients, too, whose
+inveterate pennilessness he could swear cheerfully to--“since you want
+to bolt from your own money,” he remarked.
+
+“Yes, I'm a green horse,” assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; “ain't used to
+the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em.”
+
+From his face--that jocular mask--one might have counted him the most
+serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
+would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering
+body, but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean
+of old days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy
+ground. “I've got it!” he exclaimed; “give your wife something.”
+
+The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+“If you'll give me her name and address,” said he, with the future
+entirely in his mind.
+
+“Why, Laramie!” and the Governor feigned surprise.
+
+“Say, Doc,” said Lin, uneasily, “none of 'em ain't married me since I
+saw yu' last.”
+
+“Then she hasn't written from Laramie,” said the hilarious Governor, and
+Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. “Gee whiz!”
+ went on Barker, “I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!”
+
+But the mask fell now. “You're talking of his wife, not mine,” said the
+cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; “and, Doc, I'm going to
+say a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll
+never forget that day myself--but I don't want to be reminded of it.”
+
+“I'm a fool, Lin,” said the Governor, generous instantly. “I never
+supposed--”
+
+“I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way--in
+a way--” Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker,
+seeing how wistful his face had turned, waited. “But I ain't quite the
+same fool I was before that happened to me,” the cow-puncher resumed,
+“though maybe my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was
+better luck than a man like me had any call to look for.”
+
+The sobered Barker said, simply, “Yes, Lin.” He was put to thinking by
+these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+
+Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick,
+red cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
+knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle
+and took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife
+to the best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were
+confident he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival
+and beating him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the
+marriage was an inadvertence. “He jest bumped into it before he could
+pull up,” they explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's
+sporting blood, had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali.
+For the new-made husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that
+came upon him he tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before,
+and learned also how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink
+beneath the man in baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived
+innocent until this time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so
+that citizens in Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued
+shrewdly that men of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the
+strain had broken his endurance an unexpected first husband, named
+Lusk, had appeared one Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving,
+and exceedingly drunk. To the arms of Lusk she went back in the public
+street, deserting McLean in the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne
+saw this, and learned how she had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if
+intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too,
+and went about his business, ready to swagger at the necessary moment,
+and with the necessary kind of joke always ready to shield his hurt
+spirit. And soon, of course, the matter grew stale, seldom raked up in
+the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at work; so lately he had begun
+to remember other things beside the smouldering humiliation.
+
+“Is she with him?” he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the
+moral that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and
+revealed the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he
+quieted the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote
+about the house of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days,
+thus getting one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined
+his opinion of the family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker
+detailed these incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs.
+Lusk addicted to opium.
+
+“I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em,” said McLean, grimly, “if I
+strike Laramie.”
+
+“You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?”
+ Barker ventured.
+
+“Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only--yu' see now. A man gets tired
+pretending--onced in a while.”
+
+Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness
+of the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys.
+He had come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and
+well disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing
+with each other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of
+hurry to escape from that loneliness where his human promptings had been
+lodged with him useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale,
+and he with his pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of
+Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with,
+he stepped out with a brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and
+a foretaste of a good time coming that he put on his town clothes, after
+shaving and admiring himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate
+away and drank with a robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even
+himself at first. But the sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for
+all he could do. As he groped for the contentment which he saw around
+him he began to receive the jokes with counterfeit mirth. Memories took
+the place of anticipation, and through their moody shiftings he began
+to feel a distaste for the company of his friends and a shrinking from
+their lively voices. He blamed them for this at once. He was surprised
+to think he had never recognized before how light a weight was Shorty;
+and here was Chalkeye, who knew better, talking religion after two
+glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his friends' shortcomings
+mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont, changed at a stroke.
+“I'm celebrating no Christmas with this crowd,” said the inner man; and
+when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their hilarity he was gone.
+
+Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to
+meet a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station,
+buying a ticket for Denver.
+
+“Denver!” exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+
+“That's what I said,” stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+
+“Gee whiz!” went his Excellency. “What are you going to do there?”
+
+“Get good and drunk.”
+
+“Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?”
+
+“I'm drinking champagne this trip.”
+
+The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+inside the door.
+
+“And he says he's got maturity,” Barker muttered. “I've known him since
+seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along.” The
+Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+fool. “Yes, about eight. Or six,” said his Excellency, justifying
+himself by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen,
+supreme in length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling
+for an early mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished,
+he had mended the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and
+Lin's utter health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon
+overflowed with the pride of science, and over the bandages would
+explain the human body technically to his wild-eyed and flattered
+patient. Thus young Lin heard all about tibia, and comminuted, and other
+glorious new words, and when sleepless would rehearse them. Then,
+with the bone so nearly knit that the patient might leave the ward
+on crutches to sit each morning in Barker's room as a privilege, the
+disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out of the hospital and
+hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and variety waited for
+a languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was soon carried back
+with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's surgical rage was disarmed, the
+patient was so forlorn over his doctor's professional chagrin.
+
+“I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?” he had said, humbly,
+after a new week of bed and weights.
+
+“Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all.”
+
+“Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+son-of-a-gun?”
+
+You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all
+and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had
+missed the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected
+thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
+
+“He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,” said
+Barker. “Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again.”
+
+At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked
+the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin
+took Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw
+a saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher
+over there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly.
+In such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to
+enjoy without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he
+looked along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric
+lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried
+“Shine? Shine?” at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the
+right to get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of
+stopping at all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a
+few yards, and it was across the street. This one being attained and
+appreciated, he found that he must cross back again or skip number four.
+At this rate he would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre,
+and he stopped to consider. It was a German place he had just
+quitted, and a huge light poured out on him from its window, which the
+proprietor's father-land sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone
+among a well-set pine forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots
+and reached upward to Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held
+in his right hand forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a
+string of sausages that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American
+back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he
+had not changed since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered
+carefully the Hot Scotch question, and which side of the road to take
+and stick to, while the little bootblacks found him once more and cried,
+“Shine? Shine?” monotonous as snow-birds. He settled to stay over here
+with the south-side Scotches, and the little one-note song reaching his
+attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly
+sprang away.
+
+“Dare you to touch him!” piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+
+“Don't hit me,” said Mr. McLean “I'm innocent.”
+
+“Well, you leave him be,” said one.
+
+“What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?”
+
+“New!” said Billy, in scorn. “Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+is.”
+
+“He's a special!” shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. “He's got a
+badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer.”
+
+Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. “Dare you
+to arrest me!” said he.
+
+“What'll you give me not to?” inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+pockets, arms akimbo.
+
+“Nothing; I've done nothing,” announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and
+he, too, sped into the middle of the street.
+
+“What's he claim you lifted?” inquired the leader, with eagerness.
+“Tell him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!” they
+screamed to the special officer.
+
+“Say,” said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, “you're poor judges
+of a badge, you fellows.”
+
+His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+
+Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+window. “Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here,” said he,
+following his sprightly invention, “he'd get arrested himself.”
+
+This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+the last.
+
+“If it's your idea,” pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+cautious steps nearer the curb, “that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug--why, I'll
+get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar.”
+
+The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+
+“Easy!” wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+fascinated. “Not having three feet,” said the cow-puncher, always grave
+and slow, “I can only give two this here job.”
+
+“He's got a big pistol and a belt!” exulted the leader, who had
+precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+
+“You're a smart boy,” said Lin, considering him, “and yu' find a man out
+right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they
+fix the boots--and a dollar goes to the quickest through.”
+
+Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a
+boot, with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr.
+McLean.
+
+“That's a Colt.45 you've got,” ventured he.
+
+“Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe.”
+
+“I'm through!” sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+
+Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+
+“Will you kindly referee,” said he, forgivingly, to the leader, “and
+decide which of them smears is the awfulest?”
+
+But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+
+“Well, that saves me money,” said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket.
+“I guess you've both won.” He handed each of them a dollar. “Now,” he
+continued, “I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+dollar for the best shine.”
+
+The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played
+his mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out
+his beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+
+Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher
+perceived, and Billy no seasoned expert. “See here,” said Lin, stooping,
+“I'll show yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough
+to steer anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with
+a dry brush.”
+
+“Lemme,” said Billy. “I've got to learn.” So he finished the boot his
+own way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this
+event was also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both
+parties. So here was their work done, and more money in their pockets
+than from all the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and
+Billy did not wish for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune
+as soon as might be. Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window,
+drawn by curiosity near this new kind of man whose voice held them and
+whose remarks dropped them into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted
+leader had been unable to go away and nurse his pride alone.
+
+“Is that a secret society?” inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+badge.
+
+Mr. McLean nodded. “Turruble,” said he.
+
+“You're a Wells & Fargo detective,” asserted the leader.
+
+“Play your harp,” said Lin.
+
+“Are you a--a desperaydo?” whispered Towhead.
+
+“Oh, my!” observed Mr. McLean, sadly; “what has our Jack been readin'?”
+
+“He's a cattle-man!” cried Billy. “I seen his heels.”
+
+“That's you!” said the discovered puncher, with approval. “You'll do.
+But I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to
+do this night.”
+
+At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+
+“We--are--sworn--don't yu' jump, now, and give me away--sworn--to--blow
+off three bootblacks to a dinner.”
+
+“Ah, pshaw!” They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+
+“That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up--for I
+have it to do!”
+
+“Dare you to! Ah!”
+
+“And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+Cant'!”
+
+They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+
+“I can't waste my time on such smart boys,” said Mr. McLean, rising
+lazily to his full height from the window-sill. “I am goin' somewhere to
+find boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.”
+
+He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+
+On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few
+remarks. He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that
+would have led to conversation under almost any circumstances save
+these; but the minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole
+state of things for them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr.
+McLean in silence, at a wary interval, and with their mouths, during
+most of the journey, open. The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk,
+and the unusual dollars, wakened wide their bent for the unexpected,
+their street affinity for the spur of the moment; they believed slimly
+in the turkey part of it, but what this man might do next, to be
+there when he did it, and not to be trapped, kept their wits jumping
+deliciously; so when they saw him stop, they stopped instantly too, ten
+feet out of reach. This was Denver's most civilized restaurant--that one
+which Mr. McLean had remembered, with foreign dishes and private rooms,
+where he had promised himself, among other things, champagne. Mr. McLean
+had never been inside it, but heard a tale from a friend; and now he
+caught a sudden sight of people among geraniums, with plumes and white
+shirt-fronts, very elegant. It must have been several minutes that he
+stood contemplating the entrance and the luxurious couples who went in.
+
+“Plumb French!” he observed at length; and then, “Shucks!” in a key less
+confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. “They're
+eatin' patty de parley-voo in there,” he muttered, and the three
+bootblacks came beside him. “Say, fellows,” said Lin, confidingly, “I
+wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm
+after a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a
+fit. What do yu' say, boys?”
+
+That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+
+“Ah, you come along with us--we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose
+yer.” So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they
+clustered about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started
+obediently, and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+
+“Christmas is comin' now, sure,” said Lin, grinning to himself. “It
+ain't exactly what I figured on.” It was the first time he had laughed
+since Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with
+the new warmth in his heart.
+
+Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they
+went along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and
+then stole at him a doubtful look.
+
+The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and
+the oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and
+several choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient;
+and to witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket
+and its wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the
+guests a transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as
+frankly ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all
+grew fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr.
+McLean stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+
+“Have a cigarette?” said the leader, over his pie.
+
+“Thank yu',” said Lin. “I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me.” He had
+devised a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+
+“Chewin's no good at meals,” continued the boy. “Don't you use
+tobaccer?”
+
+“Onced in a while.”
+
+The leader spat brightly. “He ain't learned yet,” said he, slanting his
+elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. “But beer, now--I
+never seen anything in it.” He and Towhead soon left Billy and his
+callow profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that
+silenced him, and set him listening with all his admiring young might.
+Nor did Mr. McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this
+knowledge, which seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+
+“I'll be goshed,” he thought, “if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now.”
+ But now the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive
+apprenticeship. “Hello, boys!” he said, “that theatre's got a big start
+on us.”
+
+They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. “This man here will look out
+for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning.”
+
+They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of
+the highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced
+so helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain
+Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other
+scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. The
+Captain's youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a
+sudden motion, loudly shouted, “Sister, the ice is closing in!” and she
+replied, chastely, “Then let us pray.” It was a superb tableau: the ice
+split, and the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop
+fell, and male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out to the
+rum-shop.
+
+Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out
+in him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+
+“Don't you think this is splendid?” said he.
+
+“Splendid,” Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+
+“Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?”
+
+“Humming,” said Lin.
+
+“Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?”
+
+“What, young fellow?”
+
+“Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff.”
+
+“I guess it must be.”
+
+“She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to
+do what she wanted him.”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that
+boat, and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends
+feel bad?”
+
+“I hardly expect they would,” replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+mindful of Billy, “except there wasn't nothin' else they could think
+of,” he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+
+“Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+off with a pole. Wouldn't you?”
+
+“Butted her like a ram,” exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+
+“Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+a-going to, an' he--I think he is a flubdub anyway.”
+
+“I'll bet he is!” said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+guardian.
+
+“I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his
+knees. An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them
+putting up any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an'
+I says, 'Dare you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing,
+an' I'd not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you
+pray much?”
+
+“No,” replied Lin, uneasily.
+
+“There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell.
+'You lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard
+the first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that
+mad! But I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents.”
+
+“Yu' must have felt like a millionaire.”
+
+“Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked
+by her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any
+time. Lemme see your pistol.”
+
+“You wait,” said Lin. “After this show is through I'll put it on you.”
+
+“Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?”
+
+“Lord! lots.”
+
+“Honest? Silver-tips?”
+
+“Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced.”
+
+“O-h! I never shot a bear.”
+
+“You'd ought to try it.”
+
+“I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to
+see you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?”
+ Billy had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+
+“You bet!” said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy.
+As with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he
+met--the few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite
+play for him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+
+“Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good.”
+
+Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. “Laramie!” said he, almost
+shouting it. “Yu'--yu'--is your name Lusk?”
+
+But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. “You're not going to take me
+home?” he piteously wailed.
+
+“Heaven and heavens!” murmured Lin McLean. “So you're her kid!”
+
+He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by
+a brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the
+boy, and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+that should restore the perished confidence. “Why did yu' lead him off?”
+ he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know;
+but as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and
+more sorrowful. “I just hate him to think that of me,” he reflected.
+The curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they
+should all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain
+Grant grew hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin
+sat saying to himself a number of contradictions. “He's nothing to
+me; what's any of them to me?” Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he
+restated the facts of the past. “Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before
+she'd ever laid eyes on me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never
+even my step-kid.” The past, however, brought no guidance. “Lord, what's
+the thing to do about this? If I had any home--This is a stinkin' world
+in some respects,” said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the
+chair beneath which the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband.
+They took it for emotion over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and
+their backs shook. Presently each turned, and saw the singular man with
+untamed, wide-open eyes glowering at the stage, and both backs shook
+again.
+
+Once more his hand was laid on Billy. “Say!” The boy glanced at him, and
+quickly away.
+
+“Look at me, and listen.”
+
+Billy swervingly obeyed.
+
+“I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+Are yu' listenin' good?”
+
+The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: “You've got no call
+to believe what I say to yu'--yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
+So I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I
+saw yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw
+all I want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If
+yu' happen to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come
+around to Smith's Palace--that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?--and if
+yu' don't come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night
+I'm liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
+to yourself. I've appreciated your company.”
+
+Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds
+in it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. “It's a lost
+boy--a runaway,” he told the clerk. “He'll not be extra clean, I expect,
+if he does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut
+out to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe.”
+
+The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+
+“Hello!” said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+Pike's Peak.
+
+Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention,
+came stepping along. “I'm not a-going back to Laramie,” he stated,
+warningly.
+
+“I wouldn't,” said Lin. “It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner--I'm dead sleepy.”
+
+“O-h!” Billy stood blank. “I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+lemme black your boots in the morning?”
+
+“Not sure my train don't go too early.”
+
+“I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em.”
+
+“Where do yu' sleep?”
+
+“Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me
+to-night?”
+
+“Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs.”
+
+But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first
+to hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the
+belt round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders
+outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+
+“Did it ever kill a man?” asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+
+“No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+killin' me.”
+
+“Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen.” He brought out
+the relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. “I foun' it myself,
+camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?”
+
+Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+
+“Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's.”
+
+“Who's Kelley?”
+
+“He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's
+how she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran
+then. An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her
+spell--an' father can't stop her, an' I--ah, I was sick of it! She's
+lamed me up twice beating me--an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless
+my mother!' a-getting up and a-going to bed--he's a flubdub! An' so I
+cleared out. But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father--an'
+you. I'll do it now if you say it's any sense.”
+
+Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. “Don't yu' do it now,” said he.
+
+“You wouldn't like mother,” Billy continued. “You can keep that.” He
+came to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside
+him. “Do you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five
+kinds--sage-hen, an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more
+kinds harder--but I couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought
+the magpie's, though. D' you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you
+stay to-morrow an' I'll show you that en' some other things I got the
+engine-man lets me keep there, for there's boys that would steal an egg.
+An' I could take you where we could fire that pistol. Bet you don't know
+what that is!”
+
+He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were
+things that rattled.
+
+Mr. McLean gave it up.
+
+“That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with
+the engine-man.”
+
+Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience
+made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
+his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
+the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man
+held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion
+that Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
+suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
+was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The
+arms and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
+conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
+frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
+breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the
+long, curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the
+door of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and
+kissed Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a
+hangdog stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the
+sound sleep of health.
+
+He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering
+with his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
+slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
+he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
+filled with the bells and the sun of the winter's day. “Where have I
+struck now?” he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
+mind, he raised himself on his arm.
+
+There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+him.
+
+“You're awful late,” said Responsibility. “But I weren't a-going without
+telling you good-bye.”
+
+“Go?” exclaimed Lin. “Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+breakfast alone?” The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
+than he could do!
+
+“I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay--why, you said
+you was a-going by the early train!”
+
+“But the durned thing's got away on me,” said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+the bed.
+
+“If I hadn't a-promised them--”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with
+them.”
+
+“Shucks!”
+
+“We're a-going to have fun to-day.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just
+as leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
+here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?”
+
+“Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?” inquired the artful McLean.
+“That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes.”
+
+“Twenty minutes! If they'd wait--”
+
+“See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought
+to waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+engagements, yu' see--for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+treat a man that way now, could he?”
+
+“Course he couldn't,” said Billy, brightening.
+
+“And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas,
+that only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's
+Billy?' They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll
+explain to us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars.”
+
+The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy
+with a convincing eye.
+
+“That's so,” said Billy.
+
+“And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out
+of Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now,
+Bill, what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just
+you and me?”
+
+“I'd like that,” said Billy. “Is it all day?”
+
+“I was thinkin' of all day,” said Lin. “I'll not make yu' do anything
+yu'd rather not.”
+
+“Ah, they can smoke without me,” said Billy, with sudden acrimony. “I'll
+see 'em to-morro'.”
+
+“That's you!” cried Mr. McLean. “Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell
+them to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'.”
+
+The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
+tying his scarf with great care. “Wished I'd a clean shirt,” said he.
+“But I don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good
+move.” He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was
+particular to store them in his safest pocket. “I ain't sure whether
+you're crazy or not,” said he to the man in the looking-glass. “I ain't
+never been sure.” And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+
+He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+the bill of fare.
+
+“I'd like to see you often,” said he. “I'll come and see you if you
+don't live too far.”
+
+“That's the trouble,” said the cow-puncher. “I do. Awful far.” He stared
+out of the window.
+
+“Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+write?” “What's that? Can I write? Oh yes.”
+
+“I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney,
+Nebraska, an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake--that's the finest town
+except Denver.”
+
+Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to,
+yet goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable
+signs of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+the bill paid.
+
+The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from
+their peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over
+the city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells
+broke out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+
+“Don't you like music?” inquired Billy.
+
+“Yes,” said Lin.
+
+Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting,
+orderly yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of
+Christmas came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day,
+possessor of his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort
+of friendly challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+
+“Don't you think we could go in here?” Billy asked. A church door was
+open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. “They've good
+music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been
+in lots of times.”
+
+They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep
+in listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent
+imitation of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain
+especially reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time
+“Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,” pealed forth and ceased, both
+the delighted faces fell.
+
+“Don't you wish there was more?” Billy whispered.
+
+“Wish there was a hundred verses,” answered Lin.
+
+But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between
+them they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel.
+Lin's eyes roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their
+evergreen, the flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and
+gold. “'Peace, good-will towards men,'” he read. “That's so. Peace and
+good-will. Yes, that's so. I expect they got that somewheres in the
+Bible. It's awful good, and you'd never think of it yourself.”
+
+There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. “This is
+the hymn we have now,” she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the
+book together, dutifully reading the words:
+
+   “It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth--”
+
+This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it,
+until he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the
+concluding ones:
+
+   “And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing.”
+
+The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned
+his face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has
+reasons which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but
+when the service was over and he came out, he repeated again, “'Peace
+and good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if
+he'll preach on them words I'll be there.”
+
+“Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?” asked Billy.
+
+“Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?”
+
+“No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?”
+
+“The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses.
+Why, we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among
+the foothills.”
+
+To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+was walked off his young heels--a truth he learned complete in one
+horrid moment, and battled to conceal.
+
+“Lame!” he echoed, angrily. “I ain't.”
+
+“Shucks!” said Lin, after the next ten steps. “You are, and both feet.”
+
+“Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them.”
+
+Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden.
+“I'm played out myself,” he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
+lugubriously at Billy on a bed. “And I ain't fit to have charge of a
+hog.” He came and put his hand on the boy's head.
+
+“I'm not sick,” said the cripple. “I tell you I'm bully. You wait an'
+see me eat dinner.”
+
+But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+
+There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription
+and most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of
+vigil, while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed,
+better and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+
+“I couldn't work quick to-day,” he said. “But I guess one day won't lose
+me my trade.”
+
+“How d' yu' mean?” asked Lin.
+
+“Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has
+theirs, an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher
+an' lots, an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for
+nothing. I wished you lived in Denver.”
+
+“Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+any of the outfit.”
+
+“Why, I'm doing first-rate,” said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+which Mr. McLean now burst. “An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+at any other job.”
+
+“I want to see that engine-man,” muttered Lin. “I don't like your
+smokin' friend.”
+
+“Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?”
+
+“Smart's nothin',” observed Mr. McLean.
+
+“Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot,” pursued Billy, engagingly.
+
+“I'll bet he has!” growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+aback at his language.
+
+It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched
+and shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through
+a scene in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and
+forgiveness, and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. “Shucks!”
+ said he. “The kid would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him
+there, anyway.”
+
+Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular
+man, with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that
+week noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little
+boy walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed
+as happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a
+word, and his face was serious.
+
+Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+
+“Hello!” said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. “Have a
+good drunk?”
+
+“Changed my mind,” said Lin, grinning. “Proves I've got one. Struck
+Christmas all right, though.”
+
+“Who's your friend?” inquired his Excellency.
+
+“This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at
+Sunk Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow.”
+
+The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+plain.
+
+“Sufferin Moses!” remarked his Excellency.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+
+We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and
+jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were
+a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal
+lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of
+sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising
+into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our
+undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly,
+except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against
+Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and
+other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's
+blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized
+by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the
+distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+
+“They've caved!” he shouted.
+
+“Who?” I cried, thus awakened.
+
+“Ah, the fool company,” said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+“They've shed their haughtiness,” he added, confidingly, as if I must
+know all about it.
+
+“Where did they learn that wisdom?” I asked, not knowing in the least.
+
+“Experience,” he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+passed); “nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain.”
+
+He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
+more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
+waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
+haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
+so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the
+emotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed
+employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the
+railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I
+dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of
+the station, and, at once remarking, “They're going to leave us alone,”
+ sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where
+some cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail,
+and here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had
+got a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to
+appreciate the jests of these rollicking people. “Read it!” they said to
+me; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroad
+was going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would
+trust to Separ's good feeling. “Nothing more,” the letter ran, “will be
+done about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall
+pass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will
+prove our genuine desire to benefit that section.
+
+“'Initial outrage,'” quoted one of the agent' large playmates. “Ain't
+they furgivin'?”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+cow-catcher!”
+
+The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+
+“We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes,” he drawled judicially, “I'd be mad at
+that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why,
+your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant.” He took
+the paper from me, and read, sardonically: “'Subsequent vandalisms...
+wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the
+cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad
+'Policy of friendship... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!” And, shaking
+his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of
+the agent. “Tubercle,” said he (this was their name for the agent, who
+had told all of us about his lungs), “it ain't your fault we saw their
+fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't
+bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late
+over this joke.”
+
+Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had
+hit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive
+to frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its
+opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to
+think of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box
+painted “Hotel Brunswick”--“hotel” in small italics and “Brunswick” in
+enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+
+Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the
+line in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well
+known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant
+young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by
+her to see about supper and lodging.
+
+At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might
+ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals
+I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted
+and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several
+empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these
+freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by
+three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking
+through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But
+with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until
+five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door,
+where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the
+smell of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick
+to spend the remaining minutes in the air.
+
+“I was expecting you,” said the girl. “Well, if I haven't frightened
+him!” She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
+“Why,” she explained, “I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side
+are you going to butter your bread this evening?”
+
+“You had smelt it?” said I, still cloudy with surprise. “Yes.
+Unquestionably. Very rancid.” She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+fellowship in her tone, said, “I was going to warn you--” when suddenly,
+down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. “Oh, dear!” she
+cried, starting up. “There's trouble.”
+
+“Not trouble,” I assured her. “Too many are firing at once to be in
+earnest. And you would be safe here.”
+
+“Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we
+are respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
+yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home.”
+ The words “Louisville and Nashville” spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+
+“Unescorted all that way!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Isn't it awful?” said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
+the pistol she carried. “But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?” And she
+eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+
+“Why New York?” I demanded. “Guess again.”
+
+“Well,” she debated, “well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
+English!” she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+to herself, reprovingly, “If I'm not acting rude!”
+
+“Oh!” said I, rather familiarly.
+
+“It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so
+free with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and
+everything--I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking
+to--to folks around!” Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose
+before her, and her eyes grew distant.
+
+I wished to say, “Treat me as 'folks around,'” but this tall country
+girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not “folks around,”
+ she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+dark as to them.
+
+“Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,” she resumed, “and never as far
+as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow.”
+
+“You've got me all wrong,” said I. “I'm not English; I'm not New York.
+I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when
+you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!”
+
+“Did you ever!” said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
+most Americans. “And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
+since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit
+you, you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?”
+
+“I'd travel my money's length to meet her!” said I.
+
+A wave of pain crossed her face. “Nate didn't know,” she said then,
+lightly. “You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+writing.”
+
+Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+forgiven.
+
+“I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage,” continued the girl.
+
+“Then I'll have your company on a weary road,” said I; for my journey
+was now to that part of the cattle country.
+
+“To Buffalo?” she said, quickly. “Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is
+Nate Buckner.” She paused. “Then you're not acquainted with him?”
+
+“I may have seen him,” I answered, slowly. “But faces and names out here
+come and go.”
+
+I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been
+sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity
+of the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and
+daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart;
+but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely
+years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to
+tell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if
+the stage went soon after supper.
+
+“Now isn't that a bother?” said she, when I answered that it did not
+start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. “Never
+mind,” she continued, briskly; “I'm used to things. I'll just sit up
+somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure
+all that shooting's only jollification?”
+
+“Certain,” I said. “But I'll go and see.”
+
+“They always will have their fun,” said she. “But I hate to have a poor
+boy get hurt--even him deserving it!”
+
+“They use pistols instead of fire-crackers,” said I. “But you must never
+sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do.”
+
+“Why, you're real kind!” she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+wondering what I ought to do.
+
+Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a
+sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable
+of its name.
+
+Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail
+after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly
+during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point
+these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp
+Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American
+railway man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt,
+but needless; and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief,
+businesslike result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on
+a board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the
+fat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees
+before it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees.
+There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were
+a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where
+you might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times
+enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the
+little station--some seven shanties all told. Between them were spaces
+of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midst
+ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a great
+string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one end
+in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyond
+each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of
+sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the
+continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed
+many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande
+similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds
+hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous
+young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot
+them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
+
+And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of
+the agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey
+Wiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up
+to telegraph for some additional cars.
+
+“I'm dead on to you!” squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight
+of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought
+it was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the
+water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind
+the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some
+fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth
+to an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and
+comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
+habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
+inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
+reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
+Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
+in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
+wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?
+
+They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that
+about the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
+round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
+out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
+should be so tactless.
+
+“If we don't get him used to us,” observed the Virginian, “he and his
+pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man.”
+
+Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it.
+The news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater,
+and playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting
+with pistols round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs
+improved, and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did not
+understand. But the company discerned no humor whatever in having its
+water-tank perforated, which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies
+and other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ. Now what
+should authority do upon these free plains, this wilderness of
+do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the air was like inebriation? The
+large, headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and out
+again meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselves
+resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; and
+later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they had
+side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his death
+accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.
+They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them forever
+from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things must be
+endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrong
+the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon
+Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for
+example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in
+town.
+
+It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would
+be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner.
+To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail,
+made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to
+the corrals.
+
+A small, bold voice hailed me. “Hello, you!” it said; and here was
+Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a
+stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+
+“Thought you were at school,” said I.
+
+“Ah, school's quit,” returned Billy, and changed the subject. “Say,
+Lin's hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with
+the outfit.” And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+
+Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+reminded him of politics. “Wall Street,” he was explaining to the agent,
+“has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+along to Chicago. We want--” Here he noticed me and, dragging his
+gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+
+“Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,” I remarked.
+
+“Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted.”
+
+“Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean,” simpered the agent.
+
+Lin fixed his eye on the man. “And you don't know it now,” said he. Then
+he removed his eye. “Let's grub,” he added to me. My friend did not walk
+to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. “Billy
+is a good kid,” he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small
+mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a
+matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. “He's dead stuck on being a
+cow-puncher,” he presently said.
+
+“Some day--” I began.
+
+“He don't want to wait that long,” Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+“And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right.
+Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do
+the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,”
+ stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I
+know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. “But
+Billy,” Lin resumed, “has agreed to school again when it starts up in
+the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to.” Affection crept
+anew over the cow-puncher's face. “He can learn books with the quickest
+when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to have
+a regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesome
+him seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--but
+shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted.
+But when I found him the little calf could run and notice like
+everything!”
+
+“I should hate your contract, Lin,” said I. “Adopting's a touch-and-go
+business even when a man has a home.”
+
+“I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was
+mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that
+got him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and
+then, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him
+hunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him
+till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man
+foreman--and he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see.”
+
+“He's asking one hard enough,” said I, digressing.
+
+“Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--” said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open,
+hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at
+me again, he said: “Don't you get off any more truck about eldest son
+and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that I
+care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'd
+not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set
+on--well--he didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and
+I'm going to make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him,
+if I can. Now you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?” His forehead was moist
+over getting the thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+
+“And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?” said I.
+
+He laughed shortly. “She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here”
+ (Lin laid his hand on my shoulder), “if you can't expect a good time
+for yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason,
+can't yu'?”
+
+I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+
+“Oh yes,” he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his
+hand off my shoulder); “I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met
+last. I guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself--Why,
+there's a girl!”
+
+“That there is!” said I. “And certainly the world owes her a better--”
+
+“She's a fine-looker,” interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered “Supper!” with a
+shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+
+“Come!” said Lin, “let's hurry!”
+
+But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+sister's devoted journey.
+
+“Nate Buckner!” he exclaimed. “Him with a decent sister!”
+
+“It's the other way round,” said I. “Her with him for a brother!”
+
+“He goes to the penitentiary this week,” said Lin. “He had no more cash
+to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his
+sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved
+time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?”
+
+“I've not told her.”
+
+“Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's not
+right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+gently.”
+
+“Death's different,” said I.
+
+“Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a
+shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd
+been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a
+skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick
+as the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be
+down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that
+crowd around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that.
+If you don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself.” And Mr.
+McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+
+The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself
+at a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had
+veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye
+attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long
+weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he
+was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted
+proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it
+tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was
+going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding
+and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that
+springs from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the
+native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's
+uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted
+uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss
+Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean,
+knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a
+lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all
+in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's
+eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:
+
+“Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance.”
+
+“If it's too rich for you,” croaked the enraged proprietor, “use
+axle-dope.”
+
+The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve
+the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin,
+to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying,
+in his Texas idiom,
+
+“Have butter.”
+
+He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on “butter” cracked an
+octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+shake her head at the plate.
+
+Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. “She wouldn't choose for
+none,” he said to the youth, with appalling calm. “Thank yu' most to
+death.”
+
+“I guess,” fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, “it would go slicker
+rubbed outside than swallered.”
+
+At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+
+“You don't seem to know anything,” observed Mr. McLean. “What toy-shop
+did you escape from?”
+
+“Wind him up! Wind him up!” said the proprietor, sticking his head in
+from the kitchen.
+
+“Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?” screamed the boy, furiously.
+“Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!”
+ And he flounced out with his young boots.
+
+All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+
+“Who's hiring him?”
+
+“The C. Y. outfit,” said another.
+
+“Half-circle L.,” a third corrected.
+
+“I seen one like him onced,” said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+his chair. “Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!”
+ And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also
+silently dispersed.
+
+Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+the lady.
+
+Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+ceremony, when she began at once, “You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+have my laugh.”
+
+“That's all right, m'm,” said he; “don't mention it.”
+
+“For that boy, you know--”
+
+“I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him.”
+
+“Now, please don't! Why--why--you were every bit as bad!” Miss Buckner
+pealed out, joyously. “It was the two of you. Oh dear!”
+
+Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. “I had no--I didn't go to--”
+
+“Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well,
+and--I know I ought to behave better!”
+
+“No, yu' oughtn't!” said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+deprecation, “You'll think us plumb ignorant.”
+
+“You know enough to be kind to folks,” said she.
+
+“We'd like to.”
+
+“It's the only thing makes the world go round!” she declared, with an
+emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she
+caught herself up, and said gayly to me, “And where's that house you
+were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?”
+
+“I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet,” said I.
+
+“Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me.”
+
+“We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ.”
+
+“Oh, I am no--tenderfoot, don't you call them?” She whipped out her
+pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+
+This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+behind it. “My!” he said, at length, almost in a whisper, “she's got the
+drop on me!”
+
+“I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours,” said Miss Buckner.
+“But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards.” And
+she handed it to him for inspection.
+
+He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. “My!”
+ he murmured again. “Why, shucks!” He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+unconscious thumb. “You hold it just as steady as I could,” he said with
+pride, and added, insinuatingly, “I could learn yu' the professional
+drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun.”
+
+“You'd not trade, though,” said she, “for all your flattery.”
+
+“Will yu' trade?” pounced Lin. “Won't yu'?”
+
+“Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like
+me ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?”
+
+“She knows the brands, too!” cried Lin, in ecstasy. “See here,” he
+remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, “we're losing time
+right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+lady, and I'll bring her along.”
+
+I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
+office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held
+the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing,
+and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to
+the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a
+cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs,
+and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so
+I helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurried
+ourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went
+out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away
+skulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of the
+somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.
+
+As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and
+on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, “Did he know?”
+
+Lin hesitated.
+
+“You did know!” she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, “I reckon you don't
+like to have to tell folks bad news.”
+
+It was I that now hesitated.
+
+“Not to a strange girl, anyway!” said she. “Well, now I have good news
+to tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you
+knew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things
+can't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about
+this world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left
+home five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's
+grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize
+bad companions when they came around. See that!” She showed me a paper,
+taking it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a
+pardon signed by Governor Barker. “And the Governor has let me carry
+it to Nate myself. He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The
+Governor was real kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must
+have a mustache by now?” said she to Lin.
+
+“Yes,” Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, “he has got a
+mustache all right.”
+
+“He'll be glad to see you,” said I, for something to say.
+
+“Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?” she asked
+Lin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It
+was plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I
+was already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse
+to tell her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+
+So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that
+“we” had before us, and that lay between her and Nate. “We would be
+four--herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy.” Was Billy the one at
+supper? Oh no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. “He's a kid I'm taking up
+the country,” Lin explained. “Ain't you most tuckered out?”
+
+“Oh, me!” she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+
+There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing
+Lin should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep
+in the agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back
+into the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness
+she had shown me before.
+
+“Come out!” she cried, laughing. “Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you
+ever so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--a
+cowboy!” And she glanced at Lin. “They're calling forty-seven,” she
+added to the agent.
+
+“That's me,” he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. “So you're
+one of us?”
+
+“I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ,” said I. “How in the world do
+you know that?”
+
+“I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them
+from his room.”
+
+“Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?” inquired the proud and smiling
+McLean.
+
+“Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+coming through on a special engine?”
+
+“Please don't say it out loud!” quavered the agent, as the machine
+clicked its news.
+
+“Yu' needn't be scared of a girl,” said Lin. “Another sheriff! So
+they're not quit bothering us yet.”
+
+However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a
+sheriff sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas,
+said to be at the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations
+beyond, and the engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here
+was no molesting of Separ's liberties.
+
+“All the same,” Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+corrals, “the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here,” he urged
+to the girl. But she would not. “Well, then, we must rustle some other
+private place for you. How's the section-house?”
+
+“Rank,” said the agent, “since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself.”
+
+“Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!” said I.
+
+“An empty?” she cried. “Is there a clean one?”
+
+“You've sure never done that?” Lin burst out.
+
+“So you're scandalized,” said she, punishing him instantly. “I reckon it
+does take a decent girl to shock you.” And while she stood laughing
+at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no
+offence. “Why, to be sure you didn't!” said she. “But I do enjoy you
+real thoroughly.”
+
+“Well, m'm,” protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to
+addressing her as “ma'am,” “we ain't used--”
+
+“Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant
+no offense,” she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+protector, “because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+about an empty. That will be rich--if I can have the door shut.”
+
+Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering “Shucks!”
+ while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: “Her name's Jessamine. She
+told me. Don't yu' like that name?” So I answered him, “Yes, very much,”
+ thinking that some larger flower--but still a flower--might have been
+more apt.
+
+“Nobody seems to have slept in these,” said she, stepping down; and on
+learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+“What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if
+you had a Louavull an' Nashvull car,” said she. “Twould seem like my old
+Kentucky home!” And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held
+the lamp up to read the car's lettering. “'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's
+a way-off stranger! I reckon they're all strange.” She went along the
+train with her lamp. “Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is
+rich! Nate will laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's
+a little nearer my country. What time does the stage start? Porter,
+please wake 'C., B. and Q.' at six, sharp,” said she to Lin.
+
+From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings--their
+doings--with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can
+ever happen again, I know; for it's all gone--settled, sobered, and
+gone. And whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup,
+how I thank my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in
+time for!
+
+To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a
+good shake-down--clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+not resist--what do you suppose?--a looking-glass for next morning!
+And we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to her,
+she said, in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by all
+means, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety better
+so; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began spreading
+straw and blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and long,
+and its tone rose in pitch as it came.
+
+“I'll get him to run right to the corrals,” said the agent, “so the
+sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them.”
+
+“That'll convince 'em he is,” said Lin. “Stop him here, or let him go
+through.”
+
+But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails
+of the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the
+headlight grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at
+the corrals chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the
+coming engine heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met
+and mixed with the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached
+together like a sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars,
+where I heard Lin ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could
+see the agent running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal
+with as much coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very short
+space for wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed
+suddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the
+place. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging
+against their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust
+coiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the
+glare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered
+around it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep
+breaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came
+out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising
+shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by
+the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so
+precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only
+look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the
+engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making
+boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor
+joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his pistol drawn, to
+keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on the lever, the
+fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and descended
+and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured
+eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his errand, when
+some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to get down
+and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he named the
+sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and the new
+yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations, they
+swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
+step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in
+this silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and
+they all looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there
+on the threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind
+her, and touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine
+Buckner.
+
+“Will you gentlemen do me a favor?” said she. “Strangers, maybe, have
+no right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For
+I'm real sleepy!” She smiled as she brought this out. “I've been four
+days and nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo.
+You see I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want
+boys to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till
+to-morrow night?”
+
+In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among
+them, and that some word was passing through their groups. After the
+brief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their
+horses, while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the
+sheriff and engineer remained as they were.
+
+“Good-night, lady,” said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the
+others kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed
+away to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern
+chaps, passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light
+in front of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and
+there a faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing
+column a bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the
+doorway, and then was gone again into the dimness.
+
+The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine
+moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an
+exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and,
+with all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely
+as the sheriff steamed by.
+
+“I ain't a-going to chase it,” said young Billy, struggling.
+
+“I've a mind to cowhide you,” said Lin.
+
+But Miss Buckner interposed. “Oh, well,” said she, “next time; if he
+does it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that
+way again if he lets you off?” she asked Billy.
+
+“No,” said Billy, looking at her with interest. “Father 'd have cowhided
+me anyway, I guess,” he added, meditatively.
+
+“Do you call him father?”
+
+“Ah, father's at Laramie,” said Billy, with disgust. “He'd not stop for
+your asking. Lin don't bother me much.”
+
+“You quit talking and step up there!” ordered his guardian. “Well, m'm,
+I guess yu' can sleep good now in there.”
+
+“If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.--”
+
+“I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin.”
+
+“I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a
+ride together. Pleasant dreams!”
+
+She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+it, remarking: “I like her. What makes her live in a car?”
+
+But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who
+took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One
+distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left
+our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off,
+when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his
+stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then
+leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in
+expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he
+slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas
+boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than
+keeping a watch on it. “So I gave him to understand,” said Lin, “that I
+had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that
+I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for
+his system.” After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the
+night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from
+Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join
+his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually
+good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown,
+unthanked young sentinel. “Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till
+they get their growth,” was his single observation.
+
+But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage
+I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note
+that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see
+him upon her return, to thank him.
+
+“Any Jack can walk around all night,” said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+
+“Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,” observed the young lady.
+
+This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that
+when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in
+at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the
+hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+
+But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside
+her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold
+her.
+
+Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look
+so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does
+not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man
+and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his
+watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she
+smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing
+swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.
+
+And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+
+“I know this road,” piped Billy, on the box
+
+“'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take
+a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.”
+
+So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+
+“Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.
+What made Lin marry mother when father was around?”
+
+The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
+that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met
+her on Bear Creek.
+
+The formidable nine-year-old pondered. “The geography says they used to
+have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman
+can have a lot of husbands?”
+
+“It don't especially depend on the place,” remarked the driver to me.
+
+“Because,” Billy went on, “Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd
+had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and
+I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too,
+only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert
+wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he
+come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and
+he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?”
+
+“No, Billy, you're not,” I said.
+
+“Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go.
+You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many
+are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen
+mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin
+ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if
+he does,” said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, “I'll quit him and
+skip.”
+
+“No danger, Bill,” said I.
+
+“How would the nice lady inside please you?” inquired the driver.
+
+“Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!” sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+“She's after her brother. She's all right, though,” he added,
+approvingly.
+
+At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now
+spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+
+Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding
+as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant
+war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his
+relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to
+the facts of his mother's life! “Though,” said the driver, an easygoing
+cynic, “folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this
+country!” But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next
+station carefully lifted him down and up. “I've knowed that woman, too,”
+ he whispered to me. “Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We
+laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think,” he mused,
+as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept
+sound between us, “there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out
+of that don't make soberness for somebody.”
+
+Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at
+our next change of horses “hoped” I would come inside, I knew she did
+not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+
+Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her
+eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks
+white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me
+that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold.
+I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart
+understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow
+puncher, standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully
+and spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre
+emotion; but the court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and,
+as plain as if he had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be
+stared at going up those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the
+joy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silent
+steps said, “Wasted! all wasted!”
+
+“Let us hope--” I began.
+
+“You're not a fool,” he broke in, roughly. “You don't hope anything.”
+
+“He'll start life elsewhere,” said I.
+
+“Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it
+into money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have
+just bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!” Lin brought
+up with a comical chuckle. “And she went to work, and he cleared out,
+and no more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given
+up tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows
+he's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and
+starts for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York,
+till she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had
+to go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the
+money he stole.” We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone
+into the quick little river. “She's awful strict in some ways. Thought
+Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday.
+Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is
+mostly sin. But her heart is a shield for Nate.”
+
+“Her face is as beautiful as her actions,” he added.
+
+“Well,” said I, “and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?”
+
+He whirled round and took both my shoulders. “Come walking!” he urged.
+“I must talk some.” So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+mountains. “I came awful near asking her in the stage,” said he.
+
+“Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!”
+
+“Time can't increase my feelings.”
+
+“Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?”
+
+“Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can
+be so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard.
+And everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending
+to speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and
+finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek
+better than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved.”
+
+“Then I'd like to ask--” I cried out.
+
+“Ask away!” he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+
+“When you--” but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of
+course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his
+substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he
+not married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I
+stopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.
+
+And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my
+mind.
+
+“No,” he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, “don't you ask about
+the things you're meaning.” Then his face grew radiant and rather
+stern. “Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some
+bygones can't ever be bygones? But if you,” he said, “never come to look
+away up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as
+if you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole
+business!”
+
+When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is
+not true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all
+plants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen
+misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the
+saddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the
+ordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility
+had been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have
+been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and
+this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. “Lin,” said
+I, “I will drink your health and luck.”
+
+“I'm healthy enough,” said he; and we came back to the main street and
+into the main saloon.
+
+“How d'ye, boys?” said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. “It's on me
+to-day,” he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was
+a little drunk. “I'm setting 'em up,” he continued. “Why? Why,
+because”--he looked around for appreciation--“because it's not every
+son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important,
+I want you to understand,” he pursued to the cold bystanders. “They'll
+have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder
+River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks
+he knows how to break a colt,” he shouted, looking around with the
+irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in
+laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. “You're not drinking, Lin,”
+ said he.
+
+“No,” said McLean, “I'm not.”
+
+“Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me.”
+
+“Yu' never gave water the chance,” retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+the place without my having drunk his health.
+
+It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+with the jail door scarce closed behind him. “Folks are not going to
+like that,” said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel.
+Yet the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle
+their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a
+Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working.
+All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her
+on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful
+cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and
+dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights;
+but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea,
+shaven clean, with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner
+to Jessamine were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean,
+so that I observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+
+“Oh, no jealousy!” said he. “But he comes in and kisses her, and
+he kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such
+oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I
+expect she must have some of her savings left.”
+
+It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her;
+and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that
+dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed
+some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to
+visit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he
+spoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of
+brother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held
+himself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then
+merely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of Nate
+Buckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sister
+was all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared
+criminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing
+loudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister sat
+close and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world to
+see. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back from
+some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemed
+more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.
+
+At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun
+draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream
+comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along
+the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that
+we saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of
+light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern
+masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and
+amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about
+the levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the
+brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I
+heard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had
+he been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and
+dashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment
+than he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a
+horse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. “Do you remember
+when I used to hold the pony for you to get on?” she said. “You always
+would scare me, Nate!” And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see
+that horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and
+she would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had been
+absent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin,
+where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was
+right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.
+
+“They don't know how to handle that horse,” said he. “I told you so.
+Give me a rope.”
+
+Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only
+was their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+been in the Buffalo saloon.
+
+“The trick is easy enough,” said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+liking an audience. “You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by
+the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit
+their fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!”
+
+He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when
+the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged
+swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its
+feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the
+saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely,
+and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise
+to silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden
+towards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until
+the head sank on the horse's rump.
+
+“Come away,” said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed
+and went, leaning on his arm.
+
+Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse
+had crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly
+unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in
+the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this
+world that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking
+him home, which his sister at first wished to do. “Why, I came here to
+bring him home,” she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in
+wax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and
+she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she
+saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was
+Lin gave her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence.
+He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about
+the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was
+said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from
+some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her
+tell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the
+same authority of that first “come away”; “Now you've had enough of
+the talking. Come for a walk.” Enough of the talking--as if it were
+a treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again
+obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and
+along the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only
+point did the cow-puncher consult me.
+
+“They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,” said he. “But
+she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and
+where she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at
+him to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.
+But I'd like to show you my idea before going further.”
+
+Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+sight of it.
+
+“That's all I wanted to know,” said he. “I'll fix the rest.”
+
+I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far
+as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour
+to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and
+sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate
+laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those
+walks.
+
+But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east,
+he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could
+not have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be
+debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did
+so. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to
+be made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning
+he and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined
+Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on
+Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.
+
+But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+
+Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful,
+serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom
+your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it
+froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+
+
+                           “Wensday four a. m.
+
+“DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You
+will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner
+of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss
+J. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor
+accommodations.
+
+                           “Yours &c.     L. McLEAN.”
+
+
+This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound)
+that this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give
+herself to a lover was distasteful to me.
+
+But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and
+she was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank
+surprise at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from
+her lips, at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as
+to her opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from
+them.
+
+“Let us talk straight,” said I. “Do you mean that Miss Buckner says
+that, or that you say it?”
+
+“Why, the poor thing says nothing!” exclaimed the lady. “It's like a man
+to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all
+just the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to
+know what I think of him next time we meet.”
+
+He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy
+in the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we
+did not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle
+or cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her
+loneliness had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+
+Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable
+roof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in
+the hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung
+to the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when
+I told her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked
+to the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one
+life-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the
+receding town and mountains. “It's awful to be leaving him!” she said.
+“Excuse me for acting so in front of you.” With the poignant emptiness
+overcoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in
+Illinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he
+must have gone with her.
+
+How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+come to him? But I said: “You know you don't think it was your fault.
+You know you would do the same again.” She listened to me, but her eyes
+had no interest in them. “He never knew pain,” I pursued, “and he died
+doing the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying
+himself, and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk
+religion, but I can't.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, “I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you
+for saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want
+it--to hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly.”
+
+During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the
+wounds of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no higher
+sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers.
+Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that
+was in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements
+brought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when
+at last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at
+the suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped
+out of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed
+and beamed.
+
+“So I went away without telling you goodbye!” he began, not wisely.
+“Mrs. Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!”
+
+The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. “Indeed? There was no special
+obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lin, crestfallen. “Yu' sure don't mean that?”
+
+She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. “No, neighbor, I don't
+mean it.”
+
+“Neighbor!” he exclaimed; and again, “Neighbor,” much pleased. “Now it
+would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing.”
+
+“It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you.”
+
+“Blamed if I understand her,” cried Lin. “Blamed if I do. But you're
+going to understand me sure quick!” He rushed inside the station, spoke
+sharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that
+had pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed
+near bursting. “I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter,
+and I expect I know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here.” He took
+it from the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. “You
+needn't to fear. Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!”
+ He watched it in her hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a
+Christmas parcel he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully
+untie. “Open it,” he urged again. “Keeping me waiting this way!”
+
+“What in the world does all this mean?” cried Jessamine, stopping short
+at the first sentence.
+
+“Read,” said Lin.
+
+“You've done this!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Read, read!”
+
+So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss
+Buckner might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she
+was willing to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her
+way east, and talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more
+than she had been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she
+could continue east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent
+believed the salary could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to
+find an order for a free ride to Edgeford.
+
+Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. “You did do this,” she
+repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+
+“Yes,” said he. “And I am plumb proud of it.”
+
+She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+stopped. “Did anybody ever!” she said.
+
+“We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“Oh no! oh no!” Jessamine declared. “Though how am I ever to thank you?”
+
+“By not argufying,” Lin answered.
+
+“Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+are crazy.”
+
+“I've been waiting to hear yu' say that,” said the complacent McLean.
+“I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an
+hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it.”
+
+“And I expect I'll go, too,” said the girl.
+
+“I'll be plumb proud to have yu',” the cow-puncher assented.
+
+“I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now,” said Jessamine, again
+laughing, sunny and defiant.
+
+“You bet you are!” said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into
+the station serenely. “You can't get used to new ideas in a minute,” he
+remarked to me. “I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,”
+ he broke out, impetuously, “I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When
+she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll
+you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just
+knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble
+inconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but
+how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some
+Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till
+that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after
+Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who
+talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival
+yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would
+find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in
+two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is
+goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in
+the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they
+all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after
+writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on
+that ride!” (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) “Got to Separ. Got
+the sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held up
+the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to
+the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in
+charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. But
+Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent.
+'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his two
+hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up and
+down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay right
+along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle and
+your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from Separ if yu'
+went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a man couldn't
+do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would be
+respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct the
+business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began to
+soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wise
+as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you deserve success after thinking of a thing like
+that! You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago.
+By eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent.”
+
+“Why, so she will!” said Lin, affecting surprise.
+
+He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination
+of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly
+failed to gratify her.
+
+Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, “I hope I shall
+see Mr. Donohoe.”
+
+“Texas?” said Lin. “I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet.”
+
+“He can walk round a freight-car all night,” said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+“I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me.”
+
+Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+
+“Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!” cried out
+Jessamine “Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why,
+Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can't
+remember!”
+
+“Shucks!” began Lin.
+
+But her laughter routed him. “Maybe you didn't notice you were young,”
+ she said. “But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe
+even the girls kind o' did!”
+
+“She's hard to beat, ain't she?” inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+
+In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found
+him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say
+good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and
+repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said
+the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the
+treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she
+made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+
+“Don't you ride any more cow-catchers,” she warned Billy Lusk, “or I'll
+have to come back and look after you.”
+
+“You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't,” shouted
+the long-memoried nine-year-old. “You will,” murmured Mr. McLean,
+oracularly.
+
+As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner
+cried “Jump!”
+
+“Too late,” said he, placidly. Then he called to me, “I'm hard to beat,
+too!” So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+intention all along.
+
+“Is that marriage again?” said Billy, anxiously. “He wouldn't tell me
+nothing.”
+
+“He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford,” said the agent. “Be
+back to-morrow.”
+
+“Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along,” Billy complained. And
+Separ laughed.
+
+But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep
+was unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town.
+Separ lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a
+while. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be
+sifted through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+
+That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+the Eastern States.
+
+“It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+to us,” said the Virginian.
+
+“We can't tell him good-bye,” said Honey Wiggin. “Separ'll be slow.”
+
+“We can give his successor a right hearty welcome,” the Virginian
+suggested.
+
+“That's you!” said Honey. “Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're
+the leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm.”
+
+“Yes,” drawled the Southerner, “that's what I'm aiming to do.”
+
+So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean.
+He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+casual.
+
+“Bring your new wife?” they inquired.
+
+“No; she preferred Kentucky,” Lin said.
+
+“Bring the old one?”
+
+“No; she preferred Laramie.”
+
+“Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl,” said the
+Virginian.
+
+“Sure!” said Mr. McLean. “I quit at Edgeford.”
+
+He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle
+had gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+
+But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from
+its lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, “You'll see her
+to-morrow if you go in with the outfit.” Then, looking round to
+make sure we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket,
+cherishingly, a little shining pistol. “Hers,” said he, simply.
+
+I looked at him.
+
+“We've exchanged,” he said.
+
+He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night
+when Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+
+“My idea,” he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. “See
+this, too.”
+
+I looked, and there was the word “Neighbor” engraved on it.
+
+“Her idea,” said he.
+
+“A good one!” I murmured.
+
+“It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+the superintendent's proposition.” Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. “She can beat that with mine!” he
+exclaimed, proud and tender. “She took four days deciding at Edgeford,
+and I learned her to hit the ace of clubs.” He showed me the cards they
+had practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in
+a book as if they were pressed flowers. “They won't get crumpled that
+way,” said he; and he further showed me a tintype. “She's got the other
+at Separ,” he finished.
+
+I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+Kentucky. “But how in the world,” I asked him, “did you persuade her to
+stop over at Edgeford at all?”
+
+“Yu' mustn't forget,” said the lover (and he blushed), “that I had her
+four hours alone on the train.”
+
+But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was
+a joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on.
+He suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change
+at Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+
+“We mostly take their tricks,” observed the Virginian.
+
+“Yes,” said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, “that's so, too.”
+
+Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of
+legend--more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and
+no serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and
+copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear
+like rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or
+in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and
+leaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door
+stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped
+in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped
+rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling
+up for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his
+grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: “Why, excuse me, ma'am!
+Good-morning.”
+
+There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place,
+and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging
+water-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+
+The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+removed its foolish hat.
+
+“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+
+“If you have any letters, ma'am,” said the Virginian, more inventive,
+“I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's.” He knew the judge's office
+was seventy miles from here.
+
+“Any for the C. Y.?” muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+
+It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+letters ever came for these names!
+
+There was no letter for any one present.
+
+“I'm sorry, truly,” said Jessamine behind the railing. “For you seemed
+real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand
+things yet.”
+
+“Yes, m'm.”
+
+“Good-day, m'm.”
+
+“Thank yu', m'm.”
+
+They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+
+“No, she don't understand things yet,” soliloquized the Virginian. “Oh
+dear, no.” He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. “You Lin McLean,” said
+he, in his gentle voice, “you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+mawnin'.”
+
+Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly
+and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I,
+and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+
+Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean “'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+for a six-shooter as ever I heard,” said he. “But she'll never have need
+of your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she
+hearkens to your courtin'.”
+
+That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. “Plumb strange,”
+ he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, “how a man
+will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.”
+
+“Your hair seems black as ever,” said I.
+
+“My hopes ain't so glossy any more,” he answered. “Lin has done better
+this second trip.”
+
+“Mrs. Lusk don't count,” said I.
+
+“I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky.” And the Virginian
+fell silent again.
+
+Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a
+good shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They
+would have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one
+or another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters,
+and brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin,
+more original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an
+ace of clubs. “I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a
+shootin'-match,” he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more
+objectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents of
+game--antelope, sage-chickens--but, shyness intervening, he left them
+outside the door, and entering, dressed in all the “Sunday” that he had,
+would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emerging
+from one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of his
+tormentors.
+
+“If she don't notice your clothes, Texas,” said the Virginian, “just
+mention them to her.”
+
+“Now yer've done offended her,” shrilled Manassas Donohoe. “She heard
+that.”
+
+“She'll hear you singin' sooprano,” said Honey Wiggin. “It's good this
+country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+corrupt your morals.”
+
+“You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man,” observed the
+Virginian. “Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass.”
+
+But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no
+one. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he
+had gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But
+more than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye
+to Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a
+wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. “She can have it,” he told me. “I like
+her.” Then he stole a look at his guardian. “If they get married and
+send me back to mother,” said he, “I'll run away sure.” So school and
+this old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky,
+who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his
+hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted
+chickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen
+at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them
+with equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.
+
+“This time right!” he exclaimed. “And I want her to know Billy some more
+before he goes to Bear Creek.”
+
+“Ah, Bear Creek!” said Billy, acidly. “Why can't I stay home?”
+
+“Home sounds kind o' slick,” said Lin to me. “Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral,
+and ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're
+good, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her
+about Laramie.”
+
+Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+angrily to the corral.
+
+Lin nudged me, laughing. “I can rile him every time about Laramie,” said
+he, affectionately. “I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store
+by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What
+do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--right
+after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says to
+me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about her
+brother and her sorrow.” Lin paused. “And about me. I can't never tell
+you--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all
+that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't
+anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was
+your son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she
+ever gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless
+her!”
+
+As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: “I
+didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!”
+
+“Well, well, kid,” said the cow-puncher, patting his head, “yu' needn't
+to, I guess.”
+
+But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention
+to the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we
+went over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots,
+a rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently
+on one.
+
+“Scanty room for company!” Jessamine said. “But we must make out this
+way--till we have another way.” She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face
+darkened. “Do you know,” she pursued to me, “with all those chickens Mr.
+McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here.”
+
+“Livin' or dead do you want 'em?” inquired Lin.
+
+“Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--”
+
+“Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!” And we all laughed
+together.
+
+“You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?” spoke Billy, suddenly,
+from his stool.
+
+“I'd like to see anybody try to make you?” exclaimed Jessamine. “Who
+says any such thing?”
+
+“Lin did,” said Billy.
+
+Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. “What a way to tease him!”
+ she said. “And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!”
+
+“I never thought,” said Lin the boisterous. “I wouldn't have.”
+
+“Come sit here, Billy,” said Jessamine. “Whenever he teases, you tell
+me, and we'll make him behave.”
+
+“Honest?” persisted Billy.
+
+“Shake hands on it,” said Jessamine.
+
+“Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?”
+
+“Honest! Honest!” And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+
+“Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either,” stated
+Billy, relieved.
+
+Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+
+“Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.”
+
+Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+
+“It's simple,” said the cow-puncher. “It's all right.”
+
+But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+
+“It's all right,” repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+looking down. “Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.”
+
+“Billy?” whispered Jessamine. “Then you--But his name is Lusk!”
+
+“Course it is,” said Billy. “Father and mother are living in Laramie.”
+
+“It's all straight,” said the cow-puncher. “I never saw her till three
+years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come
+easy to tell.”
+
+I rose. “Miss Buckner,” said I, “he will tell you. But he will not tell
+you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.
+It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.”
+
+But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on
+Lin, and her face remained white.
+
+I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets
+to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile
+I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith,
+ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could
+have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had
+it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with
+something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched
+the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow,
+seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of
+the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and
+near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window
+were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose
+the water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a
+Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I
+heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he
+walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.
+
+“She's a-crying,” said he.
+
+I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: “I'm
+sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.”
+
+“I don't believe she's mad,” I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the
+plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young
+Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he
+who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.
+But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened,
+and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him
+and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the
+door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
+
+“What?” I said at length.
+
+I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him
+gently. “Wake, son,” said he. “You and I must get to our camp now.”
+
+“Now?” said Billy. “Can't we wait till morning?”
+
+“No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+saddles on.” As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. “She is
+in there,” he said. “She's in there. So near.” He looked, and turned to
+the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on.
+“I understand her words,” he continued. “Her words, the meaning of them.
+But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she
+don't blame me!” he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+
+“Lin,” I answered, “she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.”
+
+“That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and
+she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I
+didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and
+she never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open,
+but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so
+long--and I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands;
+but she says I have a wife livin'.”
+
+“That is nonsense,” I declared.
+
+“Yu' mustn't say that,” said he. “She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+that she's honest, and loves me true--” His voice broke for a moment.
+“She said she'd wait.”
+
+“You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied,” I said. “But
+perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--”
+
+“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it
+in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and
+the chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and
+waked Billy to clear out and quit.”
+
+“What did you tell her?” I asked.
+
+“Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!”
+
+“Man, man!” said I, “go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll
+wait too--always!”
+
+“Would yu'?”
+
+“Look!” I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+
+I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its
+black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into
+the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in
+the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she
+was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole
+loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her
+would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while
+Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again
+and folded her in his arms.
+
+“Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!” she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+last good-bye.
+
+I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black,
+standing over Separ.
+
+
+
+
+
+DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to
+ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
+and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not
+guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine
+it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss
+Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never
+yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.
+Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.
+McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well,
+and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She
+was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable
+nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at
+Separ, and “yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'” Postscript. Talking
+of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send
+Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the
+ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She
+knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with
+the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to
+Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine
+wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy
+of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer
+to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve
+pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by
+Mr. McLean.
+
+“I can write a lot quicker than Lin,” said Billy, upon arriving. “He was
+fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling
+in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
+the cabin for my clothes.”
+
+“You don't say!” said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
+again.
+
+When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely
+at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.
+But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+
+Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. “Honey
+Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,” he remarked. “He says
+you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey
+says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times.”
+
+“Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,” said Jessamine, buoyantly.
+“And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till
+it clears, and then we'll go for our ride.”
+
+“Yes,” said Billy. “When does a man get too old to marry?”
+
+“I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.”
+
+“Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess
+he must be thirty.”
+
+“Old!” exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her
+table.
+
+“But Lin ain't been married very much,” pursued Billy. “Mother's the
+only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?”
+
+“It's better to,” said Jessamine.
+
+“Ah, I don't think so,” said Billy, with disparagement. “You ought to
+see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,”
+ said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. “Why won't you
+if he don't mind?”
+
+She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
+eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph
+called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to
+inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour
+teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was
+refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was
+still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.
+
+“Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you.” He was at the
+window, kicking the wall.
+
+“That's nine times since dinner,” she replied, with tireless good humor.
+“Now if you ask me twelve--”
+
+“You'll tell?” said the boy, swiftly.
+
+She broke into a laugh. “No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home.
+When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me
+three times.”
+
+“I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!”
+
+“Better save 'em up, though.”
+
+“What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty
+all over.” He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been
+tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the
+dust like a sea. “I wish the old train would come,” observed Billy,
+continuing to kick the wall. “I wish I was going somewheres.” Smoky,
+level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred
+unbroken miles. The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute
+the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above
+this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose
+bulging into the clear sun. The sand spirals would lick like flames
+along the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward. It was not shipping
+season. The freight-cars stood idle in a long line. No cattle huddled in
+the corrals. No strangers moved in town. No cow-ponies dozed in front of
+the saloon. Their riders were distant in ranch and camp. Human noise was
+extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place
+lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. “Why won't you tell me?” droned
+Billy. For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed
+away.
+
+“That's ten times,” said Jessamine, promptly.
+
+“Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+less glad now.”
+
+“Well,” said Jessamine, “there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+ask him?”
+
+Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+make a direct rejoinder. “I guess I'll go outside now,” said he, with a
+threat in his tone.
+
+She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one
+side of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+
+“And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the
+freight-cars,” he stated, more loudly.
+
+She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+restraint.
+
+“And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!” he shouted. “Just as
+if I was a baby.”
+
+“Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?”
+
+“All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me--”
+
+“Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to
+tell them?”
+
+“That's not a bit the same, because--because--because I treat 'em square
+and because it's not their business. But every time I ask anybody 'most
+anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and I'll be ten
+soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a mother I'm
+agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em, when they
+bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I had. Guess
+I will, too, and watch 'em step around.” For a moment his mind dwelt
+upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+
+“Goodness, Billy!” said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking.
+“The whole heel is scorched off.”
+
+He eyed the ruin with indifference. “Ah, that was last month when I
+and Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs.
+Chuck it away.”
+
+“And spoil the pair? No, indeed!”
+
+“Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped
+from home. Lin kind o' mends 'em.”
+
+“Does he?” said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+
+“Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+and things?”
+
+“Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd
+be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?”
+
+“Oh!” Billy pondered. “And so I said to Lin,” he continued, “why didn't
+he send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey
+Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the
+cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she
+chucked 'em like she always did father's and mine. I was with father,
+you know, when mother was married to Lin that time.” He paused again,
+while his thoughts and fears struggled. “But Lin says I needn't ever
+go back,” he went on, reasoning and confiding to her. “Lin don't like
+mother any more, I guess.” His pondering grew still deeper, and he
+looked at Jessamine for some while. Then his face wakened with a new
+theory. “Don't Lin like you any more?” he inquired.
+
+“Oh,” cried Jessamine, crimsoning, “yes! Why, he sent you to me!”
+
+“Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you
+any more.”
+
+“Why, I hope he loves me,” murmured Jessamine. “Always.”
+
+“Well, I hope so too,” said Billy, earnestly. “For I like you. When I
+seen him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed
+for you, I was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be
+awful. I wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things.
+Ah, pshaw! I wasn't going to stand that.” Billy now came close to
+Jessamine. “I do wish you would come and live with me and Lin,” said he.
+“Lin's awful nice.”
+
+“Don't I know it?” said Jessamine, tenderly.
+
+“Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him,” went on Billy.
+“And I seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you
+found out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing
+happens at all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?”
+
+Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was
+not going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever
+things she had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+
+Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train,
+and the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties
+behind the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the
+window to watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed
+out from the yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then
+with steam and humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long
+dust-choked train emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted.
+There was no one to go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The
+conductor looked in on business, but she had no telegraphic orders
+for him. The express agent jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He
+received his daily smile and nod of friendly discouragement. Then the
+light bundle of mail was flung inside the door. Separ had no mail to
+go out. As she was picking up the letters young Billy passed her like a
+shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had descended from the train, a man
+and a large woman. His clothes were loose and careless upon him. He held
+valises, and stood uncertainly looking about him in the storm. Her
+firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her hat was a large, handsome
+feather. Along between the several cars brakemen leaned out, watched
+her, and grinned to each other. But her big, hard-shining blue eyes were
+fixed curiously upon the station where Jessamine was.
+
+“It's all night we may be here, is it?” she said to the man, harshly.
+
+“How am I to help that?” he retorted.
+
+“I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek.”
+
+She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+
+“Good-evening,” he said. “Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here.”
+
+“For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+pole-wagon at Drybone.”
+
+This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out
+and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because
+Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+
+“Governor Barker has not been around here?” he said.
+
+“Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip.”
+
+“I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?”
+
+“I reckon so, sir.” Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself
+out. Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was
+mostly achieved thus, in amity.
+
+On the platform the man found his wife again.
+
+“Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's,” she said. “And we'll eat as we
+travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her.” She made a gesture
+toward the station.
+
+“Why--why--what do you want with her. Don't you know who she is?”
+
+“It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+of her talks to the likes of me.”
+
+He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+
+“Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it
+was you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this
+country to have a look at my old friends--and” (she laughed loudly and
+nodded at the station) “my old friends' new friends!”
+
+Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+
+Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned
+to her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and
+heard a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the
+large woman with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the
+stranger spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was
+something of threat in the strong animal countenance, something of
+laughter ready to break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been
+in the face, and now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag
+look of assertion that it was still all there. Many stranded travellers
+knocked at Jessamine's door, and now, as always, she offered the
+hospitalities of her neat abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman.
+As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and listened, the door blew shut
+with a crash.
+
+Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+father.
+
+“How you have grown!” the man was saying; and he smiled. “Come, shake
+hands. I did not think to see you here.”
+
+“Dare you to touch me!” Billy screamed. “No, I'll never come with you.
+Lin says I needn't to.”
+
+The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the
+wheel. “Lord, Lord!” he muttered.
+
+His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in
+his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were
+there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved
+together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered
+in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and
+golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the
+greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered
+the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel
+of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the
+trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the
+cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.
+Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,
+sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by
+his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney
+into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the
+afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher
+sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were
+not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of
+him--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with
+bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently
+he lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word “Neighbor”
+ engraved upon it.
+
+“I wonder,” said he, aloud, “if she keeps the rust off mine?” Then he
+lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word “Neighbor.”
+
+The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but
+no one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little
+distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for
+the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they
+came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat
+down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in
+silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with
+good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the
+eye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now,
+upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled
+upon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to
+everything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead
+noise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung
+low. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into
+his face and went away.
+
+“Good-evening,” said he, clearing his throat. “We heard you was in
+cow-camp.”
+
+The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change
+crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs
+out as he sat.
+
+“You look natural,” said the woman, familiarly.
+
+“Seem to be fixed nice here,” continued the man. “Hadn't heard of it.
+Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.”
+
+“Your wheel wants greasing,” said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+
+“Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.”
+
+“Stay to supper,” said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+
+“Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.” He twitched
+the reins.
+
+McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. “Better
+stay to supper,” he suggested, very distinctly.
+
+“It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before
+he--”
+
+The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. “Better
+stay to supper,” drawled McLean.
+
+The man looked up at his wife.
+
+“So yus need me!” she broke out. “Ain't got heart enough in yer
+played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.”
+
+The husband stepped to the ground. “I didn't suppose you'd want--”
+
+“Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.”
+
+Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her
+blue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+
+“No, yus ain't changed,” she said. “Same in your looks and same in your
+actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?”
+
+“I just wanted chickens for supper,” said he.
+
+Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. “I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.
+As for--” She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+“Neighbor.” “As for you,” she continued to Mr. Lusk, “don't you be
+standing dumb same as the horse.”
+
+“Better take him to the stable, Lusk,” said McLean.
+
+He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his
+room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his
+guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he
+was, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down
+in the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he
+made ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the
+setting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host
+looked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal was
+served, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back
+to him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced
+something. He saw that she had been examining “Neighbor,” and his face
+hardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated
+quietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down to
+their meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from one
+or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch and
+mentioned the hour.
+
+“Yu've not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+table.
+
+“I'm going,” asserted Lusk. “Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+interests to look after.”
+
+“Why, sure,” said Lin. “I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+me.”
+
+Lusk rose and looked at his wife. “It'll be ten now before we get to
+Drybone,” said he. And he went down to the stable.
+
+The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. “I know you seen
+me,” she said, without looking at him.
+
+“Saw you when?”
+
+“I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.” She sat twisting and
+pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+that he wished to reply.
+
+“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I'll tell you I
+know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not
+have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.”
+
+She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could
+have seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on
+his arms.
+
+“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another
+sudden laugh. “I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in this
+world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own
+good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!” Her voice
+grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly
+resumed: “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will
+travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she
+would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about
+you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their
+lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another
+wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him
+livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could
+not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no
+hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me
+a queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her
+face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin!
+Yu' never hit me yet.”
+
+“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Nor now. I'm not Lusk.”
+
+“Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.
+Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,
+'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!”
+
+“Yes,” breathed McLean.
+
+“She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office,
+but--”
+
+“I know,” the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+
+“It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+Jessamine Buckner?'”
+
+At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+flash.
+
+“And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She
+put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never
+speaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says
+she. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.
+
+“Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+
+“I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear
+Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right
+out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+
+“'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and
+hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to
+yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more
+that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.
+I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
+time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
+go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
+her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+
+“'I know,” she says, thoughtful-like.
+
+“And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+
+“'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that
+you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
+the kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
+hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
+like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
+best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a
+while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss
+Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,
+Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's
+walled up for a while.”
+
+“She could have told you it was a lie,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus
+wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second
+Best.'
+
+“Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+
+“And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+little “Neighbor,” which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after
+his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of
+mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'
+me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy
+thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell
+her about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to
+me till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the
+rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?
+You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, not
+mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right
+now--he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of
+his! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't
+touch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for
+you hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is
+different when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they
+ain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make
+yus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their
+nature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll
+be homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and
+found another girl.'
+
+“Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin'
+at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw
+him I would tell him to find a home.'”
+
+“Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing
+her?” asked the cow-puncher.
+
+Mrs. Lusk laughed. “Oh, you innocent!” said she.
+
+“She said if I came she would leave Separ,” muttered McLean, brooding.
+
+Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+
+“I have kept my promise,” Lin continued.
+
+“Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+Maybe she's gone.”
+
+“What's that?” said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. “I could
+be there by to-morrow night,” he murmured. Then his face softened. “She
+would never do such a thing!” he said, to himself.
+
+He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+beauty relighted the features.
+
+“You are the same, same Lin everyways,” she said. “A woman is too many
+for you still, Lin!” she whispered.
+
+At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+
+“Lin, I would not have treated you so.”
+
+The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+
+“You!” he said. “At least I've had plenty of education in you.”
+
+“Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+
+“I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in
+you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come
+to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and
+you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so
+comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon.
+Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?”
+
+“I can't hardly say,” said the cow-puncher. “Only noticing him so
+turruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking.”
+
+“You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were
+good times.”
+
+“Which times?”
+
+“You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.”
+
+“I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?”
+
+“Yus never loved me!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Shucks!”
+
+“Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+did. Only say it was once that way.” And as he sat, she came and put her
+arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+after him and smiling.
+
+McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his
+hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.
+Then he continued on his way. “Lusk!” he called, presently, and in a few
+steps more, “Lusk!” Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the
+husband he began, with quiet evenness, “Your wife wants to know--” But
+he stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The
+door was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the
+road went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars
+were faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks
+as they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the
+trees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by
+sounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses
+fed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it
+again. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone
+there. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of
+the corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the
+roof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the
+vine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle
+of the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But
+he ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the
+corral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men's
+saddles--from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with
+the horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she
+had sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look
+in at the door.
+
+“Lusk has gone,” said he. “I don't know what he expected you would do,
+or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.”
+
+She looked at him with her dumb stare. “Gone?” she said.
+
+“Get up and ride,” said McLean. “You are going to Drybone.”
+
+“Drybone?” she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+
+He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table
+clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she
+followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small
+bundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse
+beside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his
+cabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and
+be at home.
+
+She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed.
+“It's about his size,” she murmured.
+
+Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--this
+they had often done together in former years--and so they took their way
+down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first
+two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to
+a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
+and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+
+“I will ask you one thing,” said Lin, after ten miles.
+
+The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+
+“Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might be
+going away from Separ?”
+
+“How do I know what you understood?”
+
+“I thought you said--”
+
+“Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.” Her laugh rang out, loud and
+forlorn--one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have
+sounded far across the sage-brush. “You men are rich,” she said.
+
+They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over
+the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and
+presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they
+made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+
+“Put your carbine down,” said McLean to Lusk. “It's not robbers. It's
+your wife I'm bringing you.” He spoke very quietly.
+
+The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher “Get in, then,” he said
+to his wife.
+
+“Town's not far now,” said Lin. “Maybe you would prefer riding the
+balance of the way?”
+
+“I'd--” But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame
+her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+
+From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the
+road slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the
+immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the
+whole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged
+from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom
+it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of
+sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to
+breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through
+the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone
+bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank
+showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over
+the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's
+chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
+wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They
+passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings
+and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the
+sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.
+The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
+their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
+known.
+
+“There's a dance to-night,” said the wife to the husband. “Hurry.”
+
+He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+
+“I'm telling you to hurry,” she repeated. “My new dress is in that
+wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than
+you.”
+
+She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
+the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat
+and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen
+voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
+he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher
+was still less to his mind.
+
+“It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,” mused Lin, as he rode
+slowly along. “He don't care for himself any more.”
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day
+its hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants
+were rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male
+and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
+bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
+childhood which had set in.
+
+Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and
+foot, and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their
+captains upon its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of
+it. When the War Department ordered the captains to catch Indians,
+the wives bade them Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the
+captains to let the Indians go again, still they made the best of it.
+You must not waste Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many
+people in Washington and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians,
+armed with weapons sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was
+not entirely harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone
+graveyard. The pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it:
+“Sacred to the memory of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne,
+May 6, 1875.” Or it would be, “Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage
+Creek.” But even the financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve
+the Indian in Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands
+came treading with the next step of civilization into this huge domain,
+the soldiers were taken away. Some of them went West to fight more
+Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being
+done, they went East in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or
+their comrades wanted them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon
+the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which these soldiers left
+behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as were the
+tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
+empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
+cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
+sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as
+shall presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
+professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day;
+and the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead
+of guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and
+there was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old
+boots. Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow,
+ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces
+and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the
+doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for
+inside. Among the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for
+beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in
+the morning air.
+
+Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+scalping had disappeared. “Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885.” Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+“Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months.” This unique
+corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+
+But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
+tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
+enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
+wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
+than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
+sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
+to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
+said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
+poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
+directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
+coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
+to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
+boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
+new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
+by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
+be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
+tenant had answered.
+
+So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
+line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed
+over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
+coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
+in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally of
+Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a
+living. The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and
+instantly spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies
+full of youth and their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by
+twenties, by fifties, and out again next morning, penniless always and
+happy. And then the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each
+other till the innocents should come to town again.
+
+To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+post and corner--patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
+an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
+saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards
+at the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for
+their easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the
+fiddle at Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds
+there, the dance was being done regularly. “Regularly” meant that upon
+the conclusion of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and
+invited her to choose and it was also regular that the lady should
+choose. Beer and whiskey were the alternatives.
+
+Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see
+why his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so
+many gallant years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely
+cow-puncher sat mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+
+“Toothpick Kid is here,” said he, “and Limber Jim, and the Doughie.
+You'd think he'd stay away after the trouble he--I expect that pinto is
+Jerky Bill's.”
+
+“Go home!” said a hearty voice.
+
+McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+sombreness. “I'd forgot you'd be here,” said he. And he sprang to the
+ground. “It's fine to see you.”
+
+“Go home!” repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient
+friend's hand. “You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+
+“Yu' seem to be on hand yourself,” said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+jocular, if he could.
+
+“Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then--”
+
+“Doc,” interrupted Lin, “it's plumb fine to see yu'!” Again he shook
+hands.
+
+“Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I.” His Excellency the Hon.
+Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a
+grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ.
+Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer
+and different questions. But he knew what he knew. “Well, Drybone's the
+same old Drybone,” said he. “Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see
+how you walk nowadays.”
+
+Lin took a few steps.
+
+“Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.” And his Excellency beamed with
+professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the
+hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon
+he had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+
+“It shows, does it?” said Lin. “Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+I'm--when I'm--”
+
+“Down?” suggested his Excellency.
+
+“Yes, Doc. Down,” the cow-puncher confessed.
+
+Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+
+Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the
+Governor's good heart. “I've got some whiskey along on the trip--Eastern
+whiskey,” said he. “Come over to my room awhile.”
+
+“I used to sleep all night onced,” said McLean, as they went. “Then I
+come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts
+could make yu'--make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat,
+yu' know!” he stated, suddenly. “And I expect one or two in camp lately
+have not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.”
+
+Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+
+Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among
+the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard
+balls reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars
+and calm splendid dimness of the plain. “'Though every prospect pleases,
+and only man is vile,'” he quoted. “But don't tell the Republican party
+I said so.”
+
+“It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+didn't know!”
+
+And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and
+nodded his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should
+have done the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never
+remembered he was Governor at all with political friends here who
+had begged a word or two. He became just Dr. Barker again, the young
+hospital surgeon (the hospital that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again
+his patient----Lin, the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless,
+engaging, disobedient, his leg broken and his heart light, with no
+Jessamine or conscience to rob his salt of its savor. While he now told
+his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled away careless as ever, and the
+crack of the billiard balls sounded as of old.
+
+“Nobody has told you about this, I expect,” said the lover. He brought
+forth the little pistol, “Neighbor.” He did not hand it across to
+Barker, but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the
+doctor to see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was
+half hidden in the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but
+still stood and soon drew it back. “I take it around,” he said, “and
+when one of those stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she
+wants to get rid of me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when
+I'm off where it's handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I
+have to tell you what a fool I am.”
+
+“The whiskey's your side,” said Barker. “Go on.”
+
+“But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+
+“I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know--”
+
+A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered.
+“Not been to our dance, Governor?” said he.
+
+The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this
+evening he must forego the pleasure.
+
+“It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable,” said the
+coroner. “They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble
+in Drybone, but trouble comes to us--as everywhere.”
+
+“Shooting,” suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+
+“Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any
+in this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything.”
+
+“Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey,” remarked the Governor.
+
+The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health
+the matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead
+of sleeping on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next
+campaign. “Boys will be boys,” said he. “They ain't pulled any guns
+to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free
+to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's
+after you,” he mentioned incidentally to Lin. “He's fillin' up, and says
+he's after you.” McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness.
+He wished this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the
+whiskey. He filled himself a glass. “Governor, it has my compliments,”
+ said he. “Ambrosier. Honey-doo.”
+
+“Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering,” said Barker.
+
+“Good boys, good boys!” The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+“Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo.” He settled himself
+deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+
+McLean rose abruptly. “Good-night,” said he. “I'm going to Separ.”
+
+“Separ!” exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. “Oh, stay with us, stay
+with us.” He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+
+“You know how well I wish you,” said Barker to Lin. “I'll just see you
+start.”
+
+Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and
+walked toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead
+ruins loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen
+jockey cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and
+confusion were set up, and the tune broke off.
+
+“Just like old times!” said his Excellency. “Where's the dump-pile!” It
+was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to
+be screened from wandering bullets. “A man don't forget his habits,”
+ declared the Governor. “Makes me feel young again.”
+
+“Makes me feel old,” said McLean. “Hark!”
+
+“Sounds like my name,” said Barker. They listened. “Oh yes. Of course.
+That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+minute or so to finish their excitement.”
+
+“I didn't hear any shooting,” said McLean. “It's something, though.”
+
+As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and
+the murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices
+wandered outside, calling the doctor's name.
+
+“I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip,” said he. “But it's to be done, I
+suppose.”
+
+They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed
+and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist,
+to be ready when the music should resume. “What is it?” they asked. “Who
+is it?” And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to
+the caresses which the partners gave them.
+
+Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+after many dances and drinks.
+
+“Here's Doc!” cried an older one.
+
+“Here's Doc!” chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+since his day. And the throng caught up the words: “Here's Doc! here's
+Doc!”
+
+In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this
+flood. Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by
+those who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear
+unfinished--versions, contradictions, a score of facts. It had been
+wolf-poison. It had been “Rough on Rats.” It had been something in a
+bottle. There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker
+reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with
+wild inebriate gayety.
+
+“I must get her to her room, friends,” said he.
+
+“He must get her to her room,” went the word. “Leave Doc get her to her
+room.” And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+
+“Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'” shouted Mrs. Lusk.... “'Buffalo Girls,' you
+fiddler!”
+
+“We'll come back,” said Barker to her.
+
+“'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that
+bottle, Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!” She was holding the
+chair.
+
+“Help him!” said the crowd. “Help Doc.”
+
+They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of
+ribbons, fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+
+“She has six ounces of laudanum in her,” Barker told them at the top of
+his voice. “It won't wait all night.”
+
+“I'm a whirlwind!” said Mrs. Lusk. “That's my game! And you done your
+share,” she cried to the fiddler. “Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+Girls' once more!”
+
+She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling
+and ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some
+fiercely forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers,
+and she would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for
+her. But now she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin
+McLean. And when one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone
+to shoot him, she laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth.
+But even in the midst of the joke she asked again in the same voice
+where was Lin McLean. He came beside her among more jokes. He had kept
+himself near, and now at sight of him she reached out and held him.
+“Tell them to leave me go to sleep, Lin,” said she.
+
+Barker saw a chance. “Persuade her to come along,” said he to McLean.
+“Minutes are counting now.”
+
+“Oh, I'll come,” she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+still to Lin.
+
+The rest of the old friends nudged each other. “Back seats for us,” they
+said. “But we've had our turn in front ones.” Then, thinking they would
+be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering
+Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made
+its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and
+holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set
+her down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest
+gathered thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing.
+The notion to stay was plain on their faces.
+
+Barker surveyed them. “Give the doctor a show now, boys,” said he.
+“You've done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you,” he
+whispered to McLean.
+
+At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering
+of wind. “Don't crowd his elbows,” they began to say at once, and told
+each other to come away. “We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want
+to be shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty
+near absent.” The room thinned of them forthwith. “Fix her up good,
+Doc,” they said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the
+threshold and porch with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one
+or other stumbled on the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet.
+“You want to tame yourself,” was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye
+and Toothpick Kid came precipitately back. “Her cash,” they said. And
+leaving the notes and coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on
+the way back to the dance.
+
+“I want you,” repeated Barker to McLean.
+
+“Him!” cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. “Jessamine wants him about
+now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!” And she laughed her hard,
+rich laugh, looking from one to the other. “Not the two of yus can't
+save me,” she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+thickness sounded.
+
+“Walk her up and down,” said Barker. “Keep her moving. I'll look what
+I can find. Keep her moving brisk.” At once he was out of the door; and
+before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+across the quadrangle.
+
+“'Buffalo Girls!'” exclaimed the woman. “Old times! Old times!”
+
+“Come,” said McLean. “Walk.” And he took her.
+
+Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
+him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
+he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
+open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark.
+But presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned
+sullen.
+
+“Walk,” said McLean.
+
+“Do you think so?” said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
+with him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+
+“You're hurting me,” she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. “He's gone,
+Lin,” she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+
+She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+that he had set.
+
+“Leave me down. You hurt,” she pleaded, hanging on him.
+
+The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+
+“Just the floor,” she pleaded again. “Just one minute on the floor.
+He'll think you could not keep me lifted.”
+
+Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+had undertaken.
+
+“He's playing out!” she exclaimed. “You'll be played out soon.” She
+laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
+to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+“Jessamine!” she whispered to him. “Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion
+you, Lin.”
+
+“Talk sense,” said he.
+
+“It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll
+go; you can't--”
+
+“Walk, walk!” he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing
+his arms.
+
+“Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle--Ah, walk me to glory,
+then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for keeps.
+Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet--I'll bet she has never
+seen you look so. Let me--let me watch yus. Anyway, she knows I came
+first!”
+
+He grasped her savagely. “First! You and twenty of yu' don't--God!! what
+do I talk to her for?”
+
+“Because--because--I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off--but he had to
+sling--you can't--stop--”
+
+Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through
+deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. “Buffalo Girls!” he
+shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her
+as though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to
+wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load
+in his grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+
+Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. “So I've got
+you!” he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came
+up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+
+“Thank God!” said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged
+and encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him,
+threatened him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left
+him suddenly and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him
+here. He glanced at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men.
+The husband's brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who
+himself could not rise. Barker pulled them apart.
+
+“Lin, boy, you're not hurt?” he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+
+“You're not hurt?” repeated Barker.
+
+“No,” answered the cow-puncher, slowly. “I guess not.” He looked about
+the room and at the door. “I got interrupted,” he said.
+
+“You'll be all right soon,” said Barker.
+
+“Nobody cares for me!” cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+weeping.
+
+“Get up,” ordered Barker, sternly.
+
+“Don't accuse me, Governor,” screamed Lusk. “I'm innocent.” And he rose.
+
+Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. “I'll not say there
+was much chance for her,” he said. “But any she had is gone through you.
+She'll die.”
+
+“Nobody cares for me!” repeated the man. “He has learned my boy to scorn
+me.” He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+room.
+
+“Stay sitting,” said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+
+But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+sank as he had been. “I guess I don't amount to much,” said he. “I feel
+like I was nothing.”
+
+“Well, I'm something,” said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+breath. “And I know what she weighs.” He stared admiringly through his
+spectacles at the seated man.
+
+The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+Barker's face. “Doc,” said he, “ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+this way?”
+
+His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+
+“I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?” pursued McLean,
+wistfully.
+
+“You six-foot infant!” said Barker. “Look at your hand.”
+
+Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
+raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
+had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
+his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
+bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
+not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
+
+“She is strong,” he said. “Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+yet, maybe. Queer world!” he moralized. “People half killing themselves
+to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!”
+
+McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+him. “I would not want,” he said, with hesitating utterance--“I'd
+not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do
+to-night.”
+
+Barker touched him on the arm. “If there had been another man I could
+trust--”
+
+“Trust!” broke in the cow-puncher. “Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu'
+ever done me. I know I am a man now--if my nerve ain't gone.”
+
+“I've known you were a man since I knew you!” said the hearty Governor.
+And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. “As for your
+nerve, I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after”--he glanced at
+the bed--“and tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the
+nerve--”
+
+“Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'--don't let's while
+she's--I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but--”
+
+At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+stammering to say. “What do you want, Judge?” he inquired, coldly.
+
+“I understand,” began Slaghammer to Barker--“I am informed--”
+
+“Speak quieter, Judge,” said the cow-puncher.
+
+“I understand,” repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, “that
+there was a case for the coroner.”
+
+“You'll be notified,” put in McLean again. “Meanwhile you'll talk quiet
+in this room.”
+
+Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+
+“You are a little early, Judge,” said Barker, “but--”
+
+“But your ten dollars are safe,” said McLean.
+
+The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and
+he was desirous of a second term.
+
+“Under the apprehension that it had already occurred--the
+misapprehension--I took steps to impanel a jury,” said he, addressing
+both Barker and McLean. “They are--ah--waiting outside. Responsible men,
+Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few responsible men to-night,
+but I procured these at a little game where they were--ah--losing. You
+may go back, gentlemen,” said he, going to the door. “I will summon
+you in proper time.” He looked in the room again. “Is the husband not
+intending--”
+
+“That's enough, Judge,” said McLean. “There's too many here without
+adding him.”
+
+“Judge,” spoke a voice at the door, “ain't she ready yet?”
+
+“She is still passing away,” observed Slaghammer, piously.
+
+“Because I was thinking,” said the man--“I was just--You see, us jury is
+dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and--Judge,
+would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+if it's a sure thing?”
+
+“I see none, my friend,” said Slaghammer, benevolently, “since it must
+be.” He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+thirst.
+
+In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant
+to watch until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew
+documents from his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over
+them. In all precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late.
+The fiddle, the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls
+travelled clear and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently
+steps unsteadily drew near, and round the corner of the door a voice,
+plaintive and diffident, said, “Judge, ain't she most pretty near
+ready?”
+
+“Wake up, Judge!” said Barker. “Your jury has gone dry again.”
+
+The man appeared round the door--a handsome, dishevelled fellow--with
+hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a
+second voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his
+friends. Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once
+to napping. From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each
+arriving more unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his
+fee and no more messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in
+his chair. McLean and Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink
+ribbons, breathed and breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping
+and falling with light sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear
+itself away, and through the stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and
+expand.
+
+Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+also.
+
+“Judge,” said Barker, quietly, “you may call them now.” And with careful
+steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+
+For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. “Hind
+sight is a turruble clear way o' seein' things,” said he. “I think I'll
+take a walk.”
+
+“Go,” said Barker. “The jury only need me, and I'll join you.”
+
+But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay
+had been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had
+shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their
+brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and
+growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant
+beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and
+thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the
+wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received
+Barker's testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even
+while he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars
+came Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in
+their hopes and good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both.
+The night had gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be
+fine. It must be well with everybody.
+
+“You don't say!” they exclaimed, taken aback. “Too bad.”
+
+They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+thought paused for a moment. “Her gone!” they murmured. “Hard to get
+used to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?”
+
+“Mr. Lusk,” answered Slaghammer, “doubtless--”
+
+“Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the
+grass. She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill,
+Jerky Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse, and
+we'll be back.” The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and
+instantly were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+
+The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in
+the cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger
+until breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and
+joking; and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the
+level beyond the hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty,
+wandering shouts broke out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed
+at cans or prairie dogs or anything, cracked as they galloped at large.
+Their speeding, clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs, and,
+descending, merge in the dust their horses had raised. Yet all this was
+nothing in the vastness of the growing day.
+
+Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+strange.
+
+Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was
+a calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead.
+It was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+
+“It's a coffin, boys!” said one, shrewd at guessing.
+
+At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already
+were Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing
+up with their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and
+comment. Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And
+it amazed each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things
+with the others. “Dead!” each one began. “Her, does he say?”
+
+“Why, pshaw!”
+
+“Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!”
+
+Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. “Dead?
+Why, pshaw!”
+
+“Seems Doc couldn't swim her out.”
+
+“Couldn't swim her out?”
+
+“That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out.”
+
+“Well--there's one less of us.”
+
+“Sure! She was one of the boys.”
+
+“She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84.”
+
+“She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle.”
+
+“I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter.”
+
+“Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too.”
+
+“I knowed her at Laramie.”
+
+“Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne.”
+
+They laughed loudly at this.
+
+“That's a lonesome coffin,” said the Doughie. “That the best you could
+do?”
+
+“You'd say so!” said Toothpick Kid.
+
+“Choices are getting scarce up there,” said Chalkeye. “We looked the lot
+over.”
+
+They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on
+the hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+rattling between them. “Where's your hearse, Jerky?” asked Chalkeye.
+
+“Have her round in a minute,” said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+three or four others.
+
+“Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same,” repeated the Doughie. And they
+surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+
+“She did like fixin's,” said Limber Jim.
+
+“Fixin's!” said Toothpick Kid. “That's easy.”
+
+While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted
+coffin into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's
+store. Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These
+had been able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had
+stretched themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some
+with not even their hats taken off and some with their boots against
+the rough hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few
+waking, and so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs
+were unrolled and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the
+motionless sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards
+of this drab chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped
+upon the counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the
+coffin. While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse
+came tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an
+ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,
+concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they
+revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While
+some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies
+backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered
+by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted
+those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon
+her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and
+nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of
+the hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it
+might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other
+end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in
+some way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however,
+still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had
+done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could
+sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held
+the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They
+had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held
+them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this
+moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled
+around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last,
+with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and
+captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping
+men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone
+outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them,
+and the dray was piled.
+
+Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
+teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
+away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
+past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
+grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
+throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
+teeth.
+
+“Stay with it, Jim!” they shouted. “You're a king!”
+
+A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and
+nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from
+it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,
+he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
+horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
+Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
+skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
+dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
+the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
+coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
+fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
+of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
+drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the
+slow dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
+whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
+riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
+scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker
+and McLean, quietly waiting there, and began choosing among the open,
+weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken. Their
+figures went up and down the uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+
+“Here,” said the Doughie, “here's a good hole.”
+
+“Here's a deep one,” said another.
+
+“We've struck a well here,” said some more. “Put her in here.”
+
+The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one
+end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they
+pulled the ropes helplessly above.
+
+McLean spoke to Barker. “I'd like to stop this,” said he, “but a man
+might as well--”
+
+“Might as well stop a cloud-burst,” said Barker.
+
+“Yes, Doc. But it feels--it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+McLeans.” And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them
+and lifted the cow-boy out.
+
+“I think,” said Slaghammer, stepping forward, “this should proceed no
+further without some--perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay me?”'
+
+“They don't use that on funerals,” said the Doughie.
+
+“Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?” inquired the coroner.
+
+Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the
+hill in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so
+returned. But the book was beyond them. “Take it, you; you take it,”
+ each one said. False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages
+back and forth, until impatience conquered them. They left the book
+and lowered the coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly,
+decently, steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the
+bottom with was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid
+sand; and a little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the
+same moment. The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single
+jar, quietly smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One
+removed his hat, and then another, and then all. They stood eying each
+his neighbor, and shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley.
+Then they filled in the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near
+by, and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+
+“She was sure one of us,” said Chalkeye. “Let's give her the Lament.”
+
+And they followed his lead:
+
+
+   “Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   “Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong.”
+
+
+When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
+the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
+many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves
+had emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were
+gone--ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or
+heroes, as the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted
+quadrangle the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind
+shook the aces and kings in the grass.
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to
+mend, and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after
+that strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good
+man's heart without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands
+despatched it her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that
+visitor now, she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on
+her table. “Why did he go away so quickly?” she sighed. But when young
+Billy returned to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a
+match for him. He reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin
+McLean did not come back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she
+had threatened. She looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full
+of hope.
+
+“Billy, I'll tell you just why it is,” said she. “Lin thinks I'm not a
+real girl.”
+
+“A--ah,” drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+
+“Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl--”
+
+“A--ah,” went the boy, entirely angry. “Anybody can tell you're a girl.”
+ And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor did his
+dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+
+To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the
+boy, and the man came into town galloping.
+
+No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought
+to do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he
+held her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say “Forgive me! Oh, why
+have you been so long?” She took him back to the room where his picture
+was, and made him sit, and sat herself close. “What is it?” she asked
+him. For through the love she read something else in his serious face.
+So then he told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all
+that he had to tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him.
+“Dear, dear neighbor!” she said.
+
+As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+Billy burst open the door. “There!” he cried. “I knowed Lin knowed you
+were a girl!”
+
+Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin
+on Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the
+only care of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though
+singularly enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of
+Jessamine!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+
+      The black pines stand high up the hills,
+        The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+      While through the canyon's riven cleft
+        From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+      Serene above their paling shapes
+        One star hath wakened in the sky.
+      And here in the gray world below
+        Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+      Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+        And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+      Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+        Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+      Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+        Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+      But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+        And he goes singing might and main.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
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+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Lin Mclean, by Owen Wister
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lin McLean
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2008 [EBook #1385]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIN MCLEAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Brewer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      LIN McLEAN
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Owen Wister
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      DEDICATION
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+      received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+      none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+      disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OWEN WISTER
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphia, 1897
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SEPAR'S VIGILANTE </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> <b>DESTINY AT DRYBONE</b> </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART"> PART I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART4"> PART IV </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IN THE AFTER-DAYS </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+      future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed upon
+      her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early one
+      morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the world.
+      He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher in camp.
+      But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more dollars a
+      month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more indispensable
+      person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning. Lin's brother
+      punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless, some shifting
+      their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day. The busy work
+      of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not yet come. It
+      was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the saddle, and
+      many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the ranch books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with some variety?&rdquo; muttered the boy in his blankets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted from
+      the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them, upward
+      into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into bright peaks,
+      and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the south. On their
+      western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green River, and so at
+      length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed forth from them,
+      descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A mere trout-brook it
+      was up there at the top of the divide, with easy riffles and
+      stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the mountains, it
+      was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course, impetuous between its
+      two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it wound away like a vast
+      green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and the yellow, vanishing
+      plains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Variety, you bet!&rdquo; young Lin repeated, aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made
+      his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped
+      blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always
+      more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from Bull
+      Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient shingle-stones, with
+      dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged his face and
+      energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair shining upon
+      his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark water, and
+      having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he returned
+      with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at breakfast to
+      the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bugged up to kill!&rdquo; exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He sure has not shaved again?&rdquo; another inquired, with concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got my opera-glasses on,&rdquo; answered a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache,&rdquo; said a fourth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My spring crop,&rdquo; remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, &ldquo;has
+      juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay which
+      wanders out of your face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+      ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Him Lin McLean at once addressed. &ldquo;I was wantin' to speak to you,&rdquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. &ldquo;I
+      understand you're tired of work,&rdquo; he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you?&rdquo; asked the bewildered Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. &ldquo;Well, I have a way of
+      taking things in at a glance,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That's why I'm foreman, I expect.
+      So you've had enough work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My system's full of it,&rdquo; replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+      thinking, he added, &ldquo;And I'd like my time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's good we're not busy,&rdquo; said the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' I'd quit all the same?&rdquo; inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+      post before it gets hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and
+      the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country formed
+      the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured the herds
+      whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young cow-puncher
+      flung on his saddle and mounted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So-long!&rdquo; he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be
+      going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+      demonstrative by habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to stop long at Washakie?&rdquo; asked one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now,&rdquo; another mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there's a new girl,&rdquo; said a third, &ldquo;kiss her one for me, and tell her
+      I'm handsomer than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't a deceiver of women,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why you'll tell her,&rdquo; replied his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?&rdquo; asked the cook,
+      grieved to lose him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm after some variety,&rdquo; said the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!&rdquo;
+       shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+      company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?&rdquo; said the
+      foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought my tooth-brush,&rdquo; said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of his
+      flannel shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to Denver?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, maybe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take in San Francisco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds slick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made any plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gosh, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't want anything on your brain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' except my hat, I guess,&rdquo; said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the bastioned
+      gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward and up to
+      the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the deep valley
+      they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like bushes, its
+      cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the edge of this
+      upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther away from its
+      rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed together over it like a
+      closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple the great country which lay
+      sunk beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place,&rdquo; said Lin to the
+      foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. &ldquo;She's sure there,
+      though,&rdquo; he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew thoughtful.
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he then, abruptly, &ldquo;where's any joy in money that's comin'
+      till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o' spot-cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+      took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him. Thus
+      they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to Fort
+      Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+      young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away on
+      his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+      entertainment&mdash;a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+      waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to attend
+      the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending to some
+      visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to watch the ring
+      of painted naked savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. &ldquo;What's he quitting his
+      job for?&rdquo; he asked the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Same as most of 'em quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been satisfactory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with a
+      horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And worthless,&rdquo; suggested the post-trader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;not yet. He's headed that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been punching cattle long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+      Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+      broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most a
+      year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte Creek.
+      Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the fracture was
+      commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the hog-ranch across
+      the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker to tell you about
+      that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went up over on to
+      Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting outfit on Galena
+      Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested in some Dutchwoman up
+      there, but she had trouble&mdash;died, I think they said&mdash;and he came
+      down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to Mexico or Africa
+      next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you need him,&rdquo; said the post-trader, closing his ledger, &ldquo;you can
+      offer him five more a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll not hold him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+      I've got to see his room is fixed up for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bishop!&rdquo; said the foreman. &ldquo;I've heard him highly spoken of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's better than that; he's a man,&rdquo; stated the foreman&mdash;&ldquo;at least so
+      they tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+      agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a visit
+      from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+      wolf-dance this afternoon&mdash;red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+      Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+      was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was not
+      only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went to look at
+      him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal service this
+      Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers and their
+      families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the agency doctor,
+      the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three gamblers, the
+      waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was there because she
+      was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in blankets, with two
+      royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of squatting Indian children,
+      silent and marvelling; and, on the back bench, the commanding officer's
+      new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+      wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and pageant,
+      his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught resting upon
+      him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content with the
+      other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him and the
+      stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel and found
+      the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when a
+      cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+      three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left them
+      late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of the
+      Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among their
+      tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now, keeping
+      his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and while he
+      gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm to
+      encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+      first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief from
+      round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light breath
+      from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had caught and
+      carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought into church,
+      and with this seemed also to float the peace and great silence of the
+      plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one of the ladies at
+      the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it prolonged a few
+      closing chords while the bishop paused before his address, resting his
+      keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain suit of black with a
+      narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific Railroad, while it
+      had delivered him correctly at Green River, had despatched his robes
+      towards Cheyenne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+      off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck
+      and kissed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+      to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+      presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+      clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+      and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and she
+      looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely but
+      with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder brother
+      in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of music and
+      dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him watch the
+      bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading hymns
+      vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and the
+      wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
+      listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
+      that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
+      attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
+      with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
+      and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
+      Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
+      hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people dispersed
+      through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the cow-puncher rode
+      beside Sabina in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?&rdquo; inquired the lady, after a
+      hundred yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?&rdquo; asked Lin, absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed. What's them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too.&rdquo; Mr. McLean fell silent
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye,&rdquo; said
+      Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
+      with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only,&rdquo; protested Sabina, &ldquo;I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out and&mdash;well,
+      same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.
+      Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
+      sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed across
+      the many little running channels which lead water through that thirsty
+      soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind them the
+      post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled to a toy
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! but it's far to everywheres here,&rdquo; exclaimed Sabina, &ldquo;and it's little
+      you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the
+      talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Little Wind River Canyon,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;Feel like goin'
+      there, Miss Stone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do your folks eat supper?&rdquo; inquired Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?&rdquo;
+       Lin asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day,&rdquo; said
+      the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+      colonel's table,&rdquo; Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. &ldquo;That is,
+      if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I know. But
+      I'll do my best to stay with yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the teasingest man&mdash;&rdquo; said Miss Stone, pouting. &ldquo;I might have
+      knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+      out to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!&rdquo; and Sabina giggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+      the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something like them partridges used to,&rdquo; said Lin, musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partridges?&rdquo; inquired Sabina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
+      by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times,&rdquo; said Lin, his
+      wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+      looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+      and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+      advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect you used to dance a lot,&rdquo; remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?&rdquo; she inquired next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said Lin, waking for a moment; &ldquo;but I like your color best. A
+      girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I don't think so!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant to
+      perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+      pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+      and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
+      different from fresh. All around home it's blue&mdash;awful blue in July&mdash;around
+      Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've swam
+      there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston.&rdquo; He
+      snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
+      left him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stone was at a loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' East to-morrow&mdash;East, to Boston.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+      journey from the post that he intended to make&mdash;the farthest from the
+      post and her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got no folks,&rdquo; replied Lin, &ldquo;barring a brother. I expect he is
+      taking good care of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you correspond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+      nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+      It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin rose
+      and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she noticed
+      him step to his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I didn't know you were lame!&rdquo; cried she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;It don't cramp my style any.&rdquo; He had sprung on his
+      horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any measure
+      of his activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's how,&rdquo; said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. &ldquo;No,&rdquo;
+       Lin continued, &ldquo;Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
+      look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough
+      for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
+      now. Whoop ye!&rdquo; he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a
+      jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+      she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he took
+      the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found the
+      meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of fat
+      pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that inside
+      the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury clams. Of
+      Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found others to
+      take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles from the
+      railway, and men there were many and girls were few.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
+      knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up
+      beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get full, Lin,&rdquo; said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+      store.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My plans ain't settled that far yet,&rdquo; replied Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave it out of them,&rdquo; said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside the
+      stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+      Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+      ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+      flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+      springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid the
+      vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance Indians
+      trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small pony, or a
+      squaw and pappoose&mdash;a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding over
+      the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+      clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do yu' figure on comin' back?&rdquo; inquired the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;About a
+      month, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and during
+      this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any sense in
+      going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were? But Lin
+      remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom of a
+      little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided it was a
+      suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them to change
+      their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and unharness. Then
+      they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
+      rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the bishop proving
+      a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed through the
+      pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching Pacific Springs,
+      came down again into open country. That afternoon the stage put its
+      passengers down on the railroad platform at Green River; this was the
+      route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of frozen
+      passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was going west. His robes
+      had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
+      gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then
+      laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand how you swear sometimes,&rdquo; he said to Lin McLean; &ldquo;but I
+      can't, you see. Not even at this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye and good luck to you,&rdquo; continued the bishop, giving his hand to
+      Lin. &ldquo;And look here&mdash;don't you think you might leave that 'getting
+      full' out of your plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. &ldquo;I don't guess I can, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+      enough. Try that. You're man enough&mdash;and come and see me whenever
+      we're in the same place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
+      up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of
+      the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music
+      sounded through one of the many open doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonder if the professor's there yet?&rdquo; said Lin, and he went across the
+      railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into the
+      back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+      rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin did not
+      join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a dealer and
+      a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were painted
+      sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares. The
+      legend &ldquo;Jacks pay&rdquo; was also clearly painted. The player placed chips on
+      whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards (quite
+      fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton case made
+      with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of chips rose
+      high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was lessened by
+      one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had much better have
+      joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of the dealer met the eye
+      of the player. After that slight incident the player's chip pile began to
+      rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer made admiring comments on such a
+      run of luck. Then the player stopped, cashed in, and said good-night,
+      having nearly doubled the number of his gold pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five dollars' worth,&rdquo; said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+      chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings of
+      fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then, singularly
+      enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars behind the
+      game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll leave the train go without me,&rdquo; said Lin, buying five
+      dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+      removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+      briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised and
+      sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin lost&mdash;just
+      as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of eyes early in
+      the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+      huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+      seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+      all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was all
+      back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with his
+      hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his fingers
+      came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by this hour
+      must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm following it, you bet,&rdquo; he declared, kicking the rail. &ldquo;Not yet
+      though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+      Boston.&rdquo; He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+      man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked freight
+      cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. &ldquo;And I guess Boston'll have to
+      get along without me for a spell, too,&rdquo; continued Lin. &ldquo;A man don't want
+      to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin' with the
+      hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that hog chap's.
+      Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank, he'd say to
+      me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit o' clothes
+      and&mdash;no, sir, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly down
+      into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+      division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals, the
+      great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its locomotive
+      moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed steaming to its
+      place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted, heavily bumping and
+      parting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Lin!&rdquo; A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+      good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it.&rdquo; Honey
+      offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bruck my leg,&rdquo; corrected Lin, &ldquo;if that's what they meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect that's it,&rdquo; said Honey. &ldquo;You've had no other trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been boomin',&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+      friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wher're yu' bound?&rdquo; inquired Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That just suits me,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+      saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that wall
+      Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents freshly
+      through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from locomotive
+      to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion and slowly
+      rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and the bells of
+      the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose great dull-red
+      cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union Pacific locomotives
+      sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like ships at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between, as
+      their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding. Mutual
+      whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are yu' doing at present?&rdquo; Lin inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prospectin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy Lin.
+      To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk of his
+      friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He saw
+      himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down a bag
+      of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand him in
+      exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded over, and
+      heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue water that
+      twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk check. He had
+      his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country to him, his eye
+      fell casually upon a mile-post: &ldquo;Omaha, 876.&rdquo; He began to watch for them:&mdash;877,
+      878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are yu' laughin' about?&rdquo; asked Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wheels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't yu' hear 'em?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'. 'Variety,
+      variety.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; said Honey, with scorn. &ldquo;'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're no poet,&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+      over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+      immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+      certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+      this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+      explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+      naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of the
+      window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+      sulkily, &ldquo;Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on yu'
+      in Evanston?&rdquo; And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his friend
+      told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends, forgot
+      prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In
+      Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose, and came to
+      Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek. Here the
+      berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and the bears
+      in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually with the season,
+      making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors. It was now
+      August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making mud-pies for sixty days. But the
+      philosopher's stone was not in the wash at that placer, nor did Lin gather
+      gold-dust sufficient to cover the nail of his thumb. Then they heard of an
+      excitement at Obo, Nevada, and, hurrying to Obo, they made some more
+      mud-pies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, &ldquo;Lin,
+      wher're yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Lin always replied, &ldquo;East.&rdquo; This became a signal for drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+      the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights of
+      untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with falling
+      waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation presides
+      over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof of zinc,
+      fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The mean ash-dump
+      landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot of mange. No
+      portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry, unimportant ugliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting of
+      the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable. Now and
+      again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about and gaze
+      down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water. Passing each
+      busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned pair of overalls
+      the same label, &ldquo;Levi Strauss, No. 2,&rdquo; with a picture of two lusty horses
+      hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to split them
+      asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that too, and
+      when he considered all things he laughed to himself. Then, having
+      stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would return to his ditch. As
+      autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy gravel they were sunk in.
+      He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his boots, and hated Obo,
+      Nevada. But he held himself ready to say &ldquo;East&rdquo; whenever he saw Honey
+      coming along with the bottle. The cold weather put an end to this
+      adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow, through which the
+      sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the two friends drifted
+      southward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the dirt.
+      It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze. But this
+      part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than Nevada.
+      Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them found a
+      little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite froze one
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're seein' the country, anyway,&rdquo; said Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seein' hell,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;and there's more of it above ground than I
+      thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll we do?&rdquo; Honey inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have to walk for a job&mdash;a good-payin' job,&rdquo; responded the hopeful
+      cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+      apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the simpler
+      prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in Boston between the
+      ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this qualification, the
+      apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa, and liked him. Lin
+      made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of; and, as the mild weather
+      began, he materially increased the apothecary's business by persuading him
+      to send East for a soda-water fountain. The ladies of the town clustered
+      around this entertaining novelty, and while sipping vanilla and lemon
+      bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of the town discovered that whiskey
+      with soda and strawberry syrup was delicious, and produced just as
+      competent effects. A group of them were generally standing in the shop and
+      shaking dice to decide who should pay for the next, while Lin administered
+      to each glass the necessary ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a
+      little more steadily than had been its wont, and he divided with the
+      penniless Honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+      won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+      South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the new
+      owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his feet, was
+      only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the dance-hall at the
+      edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next day but one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had white
+      eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you spoke
+      pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried to beat
+      your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what made him
+      so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and every
+      gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get up a
+      race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon opened a bank
+      account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a silver-inlaid
+      one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle richly stamped.
+      Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the drug-store and inquire,
+      &ldquo;Lin, wher're yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water fountain
+      with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season of fine sand
+      and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung heavily over
+      man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling with joy; the
+      little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and shrank to a
+      succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus bloomed
+      everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the sand. There
+      were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste very good; but if
+      you drank from the standing pools where the river had been, you repaired
+      to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of wandering players came
+      dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa, played a brass-band up and
+      down the street, and announced the powerful drama of &ldquo;East Lynne.&rdquo; Then
+      Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that lie between there and Chelsea,
+      and of the sea that must look so cool. He forgot them while following the
+      painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel; but, going to bed in the back part of
+      the drug-store, he remembered how he used to beat everybody swimming in
+      the salt water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin',&rdquo; he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+      inspected his bank account. &ldquo;I'm sure goin',&rdquo; he repeated, blowing the
+      light out, &ldquo;and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!&rdquo; for he had
+      often thought of the bishop's story. &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; he remarked once more in a
+      muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+      have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd pull out with yer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;only I can do business round Yuma and
+      westward with the pinto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+      places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and was in
+      his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through Denver to
+      Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for some months.
+      Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a buffalo coat
+      for his brother&mdash;something scarce to see in these days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frank'll have to get along without it,&rdquo; he observed, philosophically, and
+      took the next eastbound train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+      with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+      instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft, gray
+      hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not the
+      majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa, with
+      its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a little
+      more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are not
+      understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn at
+      Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of there was
+      east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important stopping-place.
+      In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and silence prevailed
+      throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston without change. Had not
+      home memories begun impetuously to flood his mind, he would have felt
+      himself conspicuous. Town clothes and conventions had their due value with
+      him. But just now the boy's single-hearted thoughts were far from any
+      surroundings, and he was murmuring to himself, &ldquo;To-morrow! tomorrow
+      night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin for
+      thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached the next day
+      one or two of them commented that he was the most attractive-looking man
+      they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness, and wide-open, jocular
+      eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly conscientious wild animal,
+      there was nothing remarkable about young Lin except stage effect. The
+      conductor had been annoyed to have such a passenger; but the cow-puncher
+      troubled no one, and was extremely silent. So evidently was he a piece of
+      the true frontier that curious and hopeful fellow-passengers, after
+      watching him with diversion, more than once took a seat next to him. He
+      met their chatty inquiries with monosyllables so few and so unprofitable
+      in their quiet politeness that the passengers soon gave him up. At
+      Springfield he sent a telegram to his brother at the great dry-goods
+      establishment that employed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung by
+      hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+      wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off and
+      his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long after,
+      Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods used to be
+      above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton. &ldquo;Faneuil's
+      next,&rdquo; he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten home-knowledge
+      shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated near said, &ldquo;Beg
+      pardon?&rdquo; but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious Lin, with his
+      forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed into sight, and
+      soon after they were running in the darkness between high walls; but the
+      cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be seen. When the porter
+      announced &ldquo;Boston,&rdquo; he started up and followed like a sheep in the general
+      exodus. Down on the platform he moved along with the slow crowd till some
+      one touched him, and, wheeling round, he seized both his brother's hands
+      and swore a good oath of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There they stood&mdash;the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+      knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce civilian,
+      who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted resemblance to
+      him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by; and one of the
+      ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and smiled gently to
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+      afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+      and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+      Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+      air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+      sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+      friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had risen with
+      his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the paying-tellers of
+      banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at the Parker House was
+      president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal the cow-puncher to these
+      shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would not stay very long. Of course
+      he was glad to see him again, and he would take him to dine at some
+      obscure place this first evening. But this was not Lin's plan. Frank must
+      dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank demurred, saying it was he that
+      should be host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;they charge up high for wines at Parker's.&rdquo; Then for the
+      twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're goin' to take your grub with me,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;That's all right, I
+      guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like as
+      if father was livin'&mdash;(his voice softened)&mdash;and here to see me
+      come home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+      expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+      I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can yu'
+      spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off with
+      steamed Duxbury clams.&rdquo; The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where the coin
+      made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, &ldquo;I suppose Swampscott's
+      there yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Frank. &ldquo;It's a dead little town, is Swampscott.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow,&rdquo; Lin pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's been pulled down since&mdash;I forget the year they improved
+      that block.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+      first and last home they had ever had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventy-nine is when it was,&rdquo; continued Frank. &ldquo;So you can save the
+      trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher in his
+      offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+      surveyed the younger's appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+      &ldquo;After to-morrow,&rdquo; said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, &ldquo;yu'
+      can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu' pretty
+      close, Frank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+      side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+      amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+      the stress became too great. &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;while you're running with
+      our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+      not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+      revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+      shoulder. &ldquo;You've made it plain,&rdquo; he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+      eyes down into Frank's. &ldquo;You've explained yourself fairly well. Run along
+      with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round and
+      causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these things
+      at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu' need to. I
+      guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu' see me around
+      on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable to close your jaw
+      up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that to your crowd than
+      you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got for a brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences had
+      occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked him on
+      his glumness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the bright,
+      hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the graveyard he saw
+      a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel, weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ain't nobody to do that for this one,&rdquo; thought the cow-puncher, and
+      looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at the
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief was
+      shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place goodbye.
+      So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless past. When
+      she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter from the
+      street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly lump of
+      flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in Swampscott. He
+      spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but her act of kneeling
+      he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some hours he hung about the
+      little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the salt water where he used to
+      swim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' don't belong any more, Lin,&rdquo; he miserably said at length, and took
+      his way to Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+      drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly gone,
+      and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep
+      hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for
+      Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his
+      good humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+      stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs of
+      approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization was
+      utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and, galloping
+      among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner took on that
+      alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As the stage took
+      him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty miles or so,
+      shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual tones, &ldquo;Hello,
+      Lin, where've you been at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+      of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+      was hearty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It took a week for my robes to catch up with me,&rdquo; he said, laughing.
+      Then, in a little while, &ldquo;How was the East?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First-rate,&rdquo; said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+      conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+      reverting&mdash;at any rate, just now&mdash;to their last talk at Green
+      River, and the advice he had then given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust your friends were all well?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess they was healthy enough,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect,&rdquo; Lin replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no
+      notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bishop,&rdquo; the cow-puncher said, &ldquo;how was that about that fellow you
+      told about that's in the Bible somewheres?&mdash;he come home to his
+      folks, and they&mdash;well there was his father saw him comin'&rdquo;&mdash;He
+      stopped, embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed them
+      in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just now, what
+      were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have yu' got a Bible?&rdquo; pursued Lin. &ldquo;For, excuse me, but I'd like yu' to
+      read that onced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+      clergyman was perplexed how to speak&mdash;or if indeed to speak at this
+      time at all&mdash;to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable
+      had gone so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his
+      eyes from the bishop's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long has that there been wrote?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was told about how long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bishop,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+      never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+      plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry, down
+      in black and white two thousand years ago, than&mdash;than if I'd seen a
+      man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the elder
+      brother is facts&mdash;dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+      put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, &ldquo;I
+      am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been finding
+      more facts in the Bible every day I have lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin meditated. &ldquo;I guess that could be,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes; after that yu've
+      been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till lately,
+      I guess that could be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+      things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+      Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was
+      delivering the fulness of his heart to. &ldquo;And come to think,&rdquo; he concluded,
+      &ldquo;it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them big cities,
+      where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No, sir! Yu' can
+      blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll not give yu'
+      any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a stock-yard. Nor it
+      wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country here&rdquo; (he waved his hand
+      towards the endless sage-brush), &ldquo;seein' it onced more, I know where my
+      home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else. Only I ain't got no father
+      watching for me to come up Wind River.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+      self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away from
+      Lin. Knowing his man&mdash;for had he not seen many of this kind in his
+      desert diocese?&mdash;he forbore to make any text from that last sentence
+      the cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should
+      now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would join
+      it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River country.
+      More business was over there, and better chances for a man to take up some
+      land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort Washakie, the
+      bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned several leaves
+      down, carefully avoiding any page that related of miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not read it through, you know,&rdquo; he said, smiling; &ldquo;just read
+      where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts. Goodbye&mdash;and
+      always come and see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards Wind
+      River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving dot went
+      over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the parade-ground,
+      thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly soul, he shook his
+      head sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news. Meeting
+      him to-day had been unforeseen&mdash;unforeseen and so pleasant that the
+      thing had never come into my head until just now, after both of us had
+      talked and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's approach
+      to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come precipitately
+      out of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm turruble pleased to see yu',&rdquo; he had said, immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's happened?&rdquo; said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he piteously explained: &ldquo;Why, I've been here all alone since
+      yesterday!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+      gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+      blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock to
+      him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, &ldquo;when a man expects
+      lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course. But
+      when he has figured on finding company&mdash;say&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off (and
+      vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)&mdash;&ldquo;when you're lucky enough to
+      catch yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to
+      yourself for hours.&mdash;You've not seen anything of Tommy?&rdquo; he pursued
+      with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+      sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over here
+      with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the week's mail
+      for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man to do but sit and
+      sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could have endured that,
+      but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and gone to Buffalo. It was
+      circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered the money there must be in
+      the circus business? Tommy had taken the outgoing letters early yesterday.
+      Nobody had kept him waiting. By all rules he should have been back again
+      last night. Maybe the stage was late reaching Powder River, and Tommy had
+      had to lay over for it. Well, that would justify him. Far more likely he
+      had gone to the circus himself and taken the mail with him. Tommy was no
+      type of man for postmaster. Except drawing the allowance his mother in the
+      East gave him first of every month, he had never shown punctuality that
+      Lin could remember. Never had any second thoughts, and awful few first
+      ones. Told bigger lies than a small man ought, also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has successes, though,&rdquo; said I, wickedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; went on Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+      she&rdquo;&mdash;Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive&mdash;&ldquo;why,
+      even that girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how
+      insignificant he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not
+      one of 'em retains interest in Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was glad to
+      see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of Pitchstone
+      Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad care of
+      himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft in general.
+      He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East by a route of
+      his own discovering&mdash;and from his account of that journey it had
+      proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the years of our
+      friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the body he had always
+      richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a season's absence and
+      spoke those invariable words which all old friends upon this earth use to
+      each other at meeting&mdash;&ldquo;You haven't changed, you haven't changed at
+      all!&rdquo;&mdash;I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's boy soul. And
+      so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the nature of Tommy
+      (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him and took an
+      intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I was than he,
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved, and
+      on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+      firewood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at those sorrowful toothpicks,&rdquo; said he: &ldquo;Tommy's work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+      pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+      and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+      appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse way
+      on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+      alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+      sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's good yu' come this forenoon,&rdquo; Lin said to me. &ldquo;I'd not have had the
+      heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+      sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened a
+      number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+      apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+      the stew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tommy'll be hot about these,&rdquo; said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs. &ldquo;He
+      don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods&mdash;pickled salmon and
+      truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+      he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+      clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he showed
+      me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he; 'too bad my
+      damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on me ever since
+      Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail. 'You swore too
+      heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may have travelled
+      half a mile by the time I'd found four nests.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly&mdash;and in Wyoming they were
+      always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and I
+      enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite established
+      in my own soul at that time&mdash;and perhaps that is the reason why it is
+      the only time I have ever known which I would live over again, those years
+      when people said, &ldquo;You are old enough to know better&rdquo;&mdash;and one didn't
+      care!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+      cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of&mdash;&rdquo; I began, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of digestion.
+      I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it occurred to
+      me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before this, had he
+      known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the most important event that can happen in this country?&rdquo; said
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his back,
+      dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one limp,
+      open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what you consider the most important event that can happen
+      in this country,&rdquo; said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+      clearness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth that
+      I recognized to be meant for the word &ldquo;War.&rdquo; Then he rolled over so that
+      his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean country in the sense of United States,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I mean this
+      country here, and Bear Creek, and&mdash;well, the ranches southward for
+      fifty miles, say. Important to this section.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Yu' might leave a
+      man rest till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want your opinion,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Seems like yu' merely figure
+      on givin' me yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Very well, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+      perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for some
+      minutes now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect a railroad would be more important,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean,
+      persuasively, from the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than a rise in steers?&rdquo; said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. &ldquo;Oh yes.
+      Yes, a railroad certainly would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's got to be money, anyhow,&rdquo; stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. &ldquo;Money in
+      some shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How little you understand the real wants of the country!&rdquo; said I, coming
+      to the point. &ldquo;It's a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; I repeated. &ldquo;A new girl coming to this starved country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;yu' caught me&mdash;if that's much to do when a man is
+      half-witted with dinner and sleep.&rdquo; He closed his eyes again and lay with
+      a specious expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a
+      solitary entertainment, and palls. &ldquo;Starved,&rdquo; he presently muttered. &ldquo;We
+      are kind o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the
+      square mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young&mdash;bet yu'
+      I know who she is!&rdquo; he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a
+      finger at me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I nodded. This was not the lady's name&mdash;he could not recall her name&mdash;but
+      his geography of her was accurate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+      received a letter&mdash;no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+      days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all see
+      the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me. The
+      letter was signed,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever your afectionite frend.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Katie Peck,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+      drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+      when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+      Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should like
+      to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. &ldquo;Like to come and be like old
+      times&rdquo; filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers with
+      expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on Bear
+      Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she does not
+      come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned, and old girls
+      had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss Molly Wood (the
+      Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in order the cabin and the
+      children of the Taylors, while they were gone forty-five miles to the
+      stage station to meet their guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lin, judicially, &ldquo;Miss Wood is a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+      Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin thoughtfully continued. &ldquo;She is&mdash;she's&mdash;she's&mdash;what are
+      you laughin' at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to, do
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed better,
+      I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like gettin'
+      kissed against their wishes&mdash;and you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the point would rather seem to be that she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or I'll&mdash;I'll
+      talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard me do yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to point&mdash;that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+      right.&rdquo; He ruminated for a moment. &ldquo;She has about scared all the boys off,
+      though,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;And that's what you get by being refined,&rdquo; he
+      concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He was
+      there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk Creek.
+      Didn't seem particularly frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, nothin' alarms him&mdash;not even refinement,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean,
+      with his grin. &ldquo;And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+      of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+      would us poor punchers do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have me cornered,&rdquo; said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence, Lin
+      on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon a scene
+      my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring had passed over
+      it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels undulated in
+      emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this moment of to-day
+      was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the dimples of the
+      foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun melted among them.
+      Around the doubling of the creek in the willow thickets glimmered skeined
+      veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The stream poured turbulently away
+      from the snows of the mountains behind us. It went winding in many folds
+      across the meadows into distance and smallness, and so vanished round the
+      great red battlement of wall beyond. Upon this were falling the deep hues
+      of afternoon&mdash;violet, rose, and saffron, swimming and meeting as if
+      some prism had dissolved and flowed over the turrets and crevices of the
+      sandstone. Far over there I saw a dot move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin looked out of the window. &ldquo;It's more than Tommy,&rdquo; said he, at once;
+      and his eyes made it out before mine could. &ldquo;It's a wagon. That's Tommy's
+      bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish,&rdquo; Lin severely
+      commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least be a
+      homestretch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+      horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+      faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+      remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+      best understood by cows&mdash;&ldquo;Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+      oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!&rdquo; But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets are
+      worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can produce
+      these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such sounds
+      ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when the last
+      cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already befallen) the
+      yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle appeared to
+      appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that was plain even
+      at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch, after all. The
+      bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned beside the
+      wagon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showin' off,&rdquo; remarked Lin. &ldquo;Tommy's showin' off.&rdquo; Suspicion crossed his
+      face, and then certainty. &ldquo;Why, we might have knowed that!&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      in dudgeon. &ldquo;It's her.&rdquo; He hastened outside for a better look, and I came
+      to the door myself. &ldquo;That's what it is,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It's the girl. Oh yes.
+      That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for. She come by the stage
+      all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been too tired to travel, yu'
+      see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his buckskins&mdash;they're
+      four-year-olds. Or else&mdash;anyway, they laid over last night at Powder
+      River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu' see, holdin' the mail back
+      on us twenty-four hours&mdash;and that's your postmaster!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+      indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new girl,
+      I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade drew
+      near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention focused
+      upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear made a
+      cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly chirruped to
+      his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For Tommy wore
+      upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in the Wild West.
+      Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might have conducted a
+      show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person before the eyes of
+      princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake skin for a hat-band,
+      he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of buckskin, and concluded
+      with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there were things between his shirt
+      and his heels, but all leather and deadly weapons. He had also a riata, a
+      cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently employed these Spanish names for the
+      objects. I wish that I had not lost Tommy's photograph in Rocky Mountain
+      costume. You must understand that he was really pretty, with blue eyes,
+      ruddy cheeks, and a graceful figure; and, besides, he had twenty-four
+      hours' start of poor dusty Lin, whose best clothes were elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present us
+      to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook the
+      office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. &ldquo;Good friends of
+      mine, and gentlemen, both,&rdquo; said he to Miss Peck; and to us, &ldquo;A lady whose
+      acquaintance will prove a treat to our section.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+      recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its being
+      a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she exclaimed to Tommy, &ldquo;I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+      eggs you've spoke so much about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+      merely to exclaim, &ldquo;Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been laying
+      since Christmas!&rdquo; and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy try to find
+      all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore embarrassment to
+      the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels of the wagon. He
+      looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his features assumed a
+      rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if that ain't!&rdquo; cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin as
+      he now assisted her to descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All?&rdquo; faltered Tommy. &ldquo;Not the four nests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had three meals, yu' know,&rdquo; Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped him,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+      ham. Forgive us, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+      eyes upon me. &ldquo;You're a case, too, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot. In
+      her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned back
+      to Lin McLean. &ldquo;You carry that,&rdquo; said she, and gave the pleased
+      cow-puncher a hand valise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll look after your things, Miss Peck,&rdquo; called Tommy, now springing down
+      from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!&rdquo; said the lady, but
+      favoring him with a look from her large eyes. &ldquo;There's plenty of gentlemen
+      here.&rdquo; With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the cabin, he
+      following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear. &ldquo;Well, I
+      guess I'm about collapsed!&rdquo; said she, vigorously, and sank upon one of
+      Tommy's chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+      assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought a
+      basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+      whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have done
+      something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone to the
+      stable with the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such a
+      quick look at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine,&rdquo; said Lin, gallantly. &ldquo;Our
+      climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a case, anyway!&rdquo; exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and, throwing
+      one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with cheerful talk.
+      She steadily watched him&mdash;his face sometimes, sometimes his lounging,
+      masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to her, Taylor
+      departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor, busy with
+      supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at having her old
+      friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sickness has changed poor Katie some,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I'm hoping she'll
+      get back her looks on Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems less feeble than I had understood,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired and
+      down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But Taylor
+      and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day she's
+      real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long will she stay?&rdquo; I inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+      young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+      brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+      much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as Taylor
+      knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February, for you
+      always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times. Katie'll be
+      most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was sixteen the
+      very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got some good man
+      for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance, for there was a
+      big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real scandalous,
+      getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely at all. And so
+      she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the railroad eating-house
+      at Sidney, and now she has poor health with feeding them big trains day
+      and night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A biscuit-shooter!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said she then,
+      &ldquo;I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+      waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+      stations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+      dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for, and
+      will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you sprang
+      from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You discerned by
+      instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through doorways, had
+      taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in a room of tables
+      and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing attention, a platoon of
+      Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began immediately a swift chant. It
+      hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow. In this inexpressible ceremony
+      the name of every dish went hurtling into the next, telescoped to
+      shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your Amazon in the middle, it
+      dislocated her, and she merely went back and took a fresh start. The chant
+      was always the same, but you never learned it. As soon as it began, your
+      mind snapped shut like the upper berth in a Pullman. You must have uttered
+      appropriate words&mdash;even a parrot will&mdash;for next you were eating
+      things&mdash;pie, ham, hot cakes&mdash;as fast as you could. Twenty
+      minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with your pile-driven
+      stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is not dieted with
+      greater velocity, and &ldquo;biscuit-shooter&rdquo; is a grand word. Very likely some
+      Homer of the railroad yards first said it&mdash;for what men upon the
+      present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we Americans?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+      conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+      marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding in
+      response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her into
+      convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but allowed
+      the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly now and then,
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; and &ldquo;If you ain't!&rdquo; Lin was most certainly engaging, if that
+      was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled upon her, and he half
+      closed them now and then to look at her more effectively. I suppose she
+      was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say that she was handsome in a
+      large California-fruit style. They made a good-looking pair of animals.
+      But it was in the presence of Tommy that Master Lin shone more
+      energetically than ever, and under such shining Tommy was transparently
+      restless. He tried, and failed, to bring the conversation his way, and
+      took to rearranging the mail and the furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supper's ready,&rdquo; he said, at length. &ldquo;Come right in, Miss Peck; right in
+      here. This is your seat&mdash;this one, please. Now you can see my fields
+      out of the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sit here,&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was between
+      them. &ldquo;Them's elegant!&rdquo; she presently exclaimed to Tommy. &ldquo;Did you cook
+      'em?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of his
+      ranch, his potatoes, his horses. &ldquo;And do you punch cattle, too?&rdquo; she
+      inquired of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; said Tommy, slightingly; &ldquo;gave it up years ago; too empty a life for
+      me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own property&rdquo;&mdash;Tommy
+      swept his hand at the whole landscape&mdash;&ldquo;he takes to more intellectual
+      work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lickin' postage-stamps,&rdquo; Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lick them and I cancel them,&rdquo; answered the postmaster; and it does
+      not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's one on you,&rdquo; she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+      who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+      his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+      slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she went
+      for a little walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katie was ever a tease,&rdquo; said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+      Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. &ldquo;She'll get
+      used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,&rdquo;
+       said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was only
+      when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men choosing
+      various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a while. We lay
+      in the blank&mdash;we had spread on some soft, dry sand in preference to
+      the stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the contemplative
+      influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever notice,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not feel sure that I had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get to
+      require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever notice,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+      get to increasing the dose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him roping six bears!&rdquo; pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+      &ldquo;Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter other
+      men'll get? Why's that, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I sank
+      beyond his reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+      remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+      did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at the
+      drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the daytime
+      there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and hearing the
+      news. There I heard how things were going everywhere, including Bear
+      Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was a
+      great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than the
+      school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and showed
+      it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town buying
+      presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for a
+      necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him. Too bad
+      Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only yesterday to
+      get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big joke on Lin
+      McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew the location
+      of, and Tommy got the bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They had
+      been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was in
+      visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering and
+      branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+      Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in camp.
+      Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely watching
+      Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way quite so
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said the Southerner, &ldquo;I reckon you're failin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants,&rdquo; pursued the Virginian.
+      The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+      young pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food,&rdquo; his ingenious friend
+      continued, slowly and gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't sca'cely hon'able,&rdquo; went on the Virginian, &ldquo;to waste away durin'
+      the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If he is paid
+      to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge or pull
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not many dodge my rope,&rdquo; boasted Lin, imprudently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+      plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. &ldquo;I'll improve,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so handy. Has
+      she promised to be your sister yet?&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what they do?&rdquo; inquired the Virginian, serenely. &ldquo;I have never
+      got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory is
+      to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted than
+      most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors',&rdquo; he now told the
+      camp. &ldquo;He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General Miles, and
+      General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in conversation,
+      and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck appeared
+      interested in his statements.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?&rdquo; demanded Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Visitin' Miss Wood,&rdquo; answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+      also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. &ldquo;You'd ought to write
+      to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is gettin'
+      to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and you would
+      have the runnin' all to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fix him yet,&rdquo; muttered Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Him and his wars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he rose and left us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+      spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+      therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was puzzled.
+      Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman had been a
+      transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty romances, where
+      the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and moved on. Nor had his
+      affairs been of the sort to teach a young man respect. I am putting it
+      rather mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after that
+      began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was a
+      serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A man
+      was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some day and
+      found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No interest, no
+      surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty owed him fifty
+      dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the round-up, and he, Lin,
+      would get his time and rustle altogether some five hundred dollars. Then
+      there was his homestead claim on Box Elder, and the surveyors were coming
+      in this fall. No better location for a home in this country than Box
+      Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it needed was a house and ditches and
+      buildings and fences, and to be planted with crops. Such chances and
+      considerations should sober a man and make him careful what he did. &ldquo;I'd
+      take in Cheyenne on our wedding-trip, and after that I'd settle right down
+      to improving Box Elder,&rdquo; concluded Mr. McLean, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not remotely
+      imagined such a step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her!&rdquo; I screeched in dismay. &ldquo;Marry her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but I
+      emphasized both thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't expect yu'd act that way,&rdquo; said the lover. He dropped behind me
+      fifty yards and spoke no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+      into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+      my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry or
+      wounded&mdash;resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as of
+      his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for a while
+      how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon abandoned
+      the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; I began, slowing my horse, &ldquo;you must not think about what I said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects,&rdquo; said he, and slowed his own horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, look here!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Astonishment makes a man say anything,&rdquo; I proceeded. &ldquo;And I'll say again
+      you're too good for her&mdash;and I'll say I don't generally believe in
+      the wife being older than the husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's two years?&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+      twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation of
+      the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+      estimate her own age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month,&rdquo; said Lin, with
+      sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. &ldquo;I promised her a
+      bear-skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I heard about that in Buffalo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin's face grew dusky with anger. &ldquo;No doubt yu' heard about it,&rdquo; said he.
+      &ldquo;I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told the truth
+      to any of 'em&mdash;but her.&rdquo; He looked at me with a certain hesitation.
+      &ldquo;I think I will,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I don't mind tellin' you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+      of rope that hung on his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+      something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+      named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+      notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+      cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+      the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+      them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+      bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+      she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+      was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+      spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come home
+      though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to see what
+      she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start whining, and
+      she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and lifts up a cub and
+      holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a person. And she rubbed
+      her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped her, and she cuffed the
+      cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away they starts rolling all
+      three of 'em! I watched that for a long while. That big thing just nursed
+      and played with them little cubs, beatin' em for a change onced in a
+      while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd sit up solemn and look all
+      around so life-like that I near busted. Why, how was I goin' to spoil
+      that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for I'd have hated to have Mrs.
+      Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She claimed I was scared to
+      shoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After you had told her why it was?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+      foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has the
+      skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+      Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But since she has taken you?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+      to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand also
+      the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these differed
+      from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand was why
+      Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque, a career
+      in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a present lacking
+      context&mdash;indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy would win!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I'm backing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back away!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Tommy can please a woman&mdash;him and his blue
+      eyes&mdash;but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better
+      than he knows about killin' Injuns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear about the Crows?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+      papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+      troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+      believed any Crows&mdash;&rdquo; he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter now?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing.&rdquo; He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+      extent. &ldquo;What made yu' say that to me?&rdquo; he asked, presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Colts ought not to marry,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the Virginian's
+      black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next the Taylors' that Lin
+      changed the lively course of thought that was evidently filling his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell yu',&rdquo; said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to the
+      black horse, &ldquo;for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the same.
+      She likes him dangling round her so earnest&mdash;him that no body ever
+      saw dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does
+      he get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the
+      Miss Woods of this world,&rdquo; he added, defiantly&mdash;&ldquo;except at long
+      range.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+      Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+      pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her&mdash;whether
+      the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company; whatever
+      had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair looked
+      curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and her cheeks
+      were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood talking sweetly to
+      her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was no doubt that he had
+      been &ldquo;raised good enough&rdquo; to appreciate her, no matter what had been his
+      raising!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin greeted every one jauntily. &ldquo;How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+      Tommy?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I declare!&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and then
+      he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, &ldquo;I hadn't been goin' to
+      mention it to the ladies until it was right sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck,&rdquo; said Tommy. &ldquo;There's lots of men
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's afraid?&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+      weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Tommy!&rdquo; called Taylor from the lane. &ldquo;Your horse has broke his
+      rein and run down the field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be cooking supper now,&rdquo; said Katie, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stir for yu',&rdquo; said Lin, grinning at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along then,&rdquo; said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+      Virginian, and she looked at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+      wasn't new any more it might become dull!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. &ldquo;But mightn't it become
+      just&mdash;just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very&mdash;determined,
+      you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one is determined,&rdquo; said the Virginian
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly looked inquiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what a notion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy&mdash;well, Tommy is considered harmless,
+      ma'am. A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never
+      let Tommy get ahaid of him that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!&rdquo; exclaimed Molly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ma'am,&rdquo; said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+      &ldquo;where is any countin' without some love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference between
+      thinkin' and feelin', ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her cheeks.
+      But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+      the jiste!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All cow-punchers&mdash;&rdquo; I attempted to resume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quit now, Lin McLean,&rdquo; shouted the voice, &ldquo;or I'll put yus through that
+      window, and it shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+      since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face. And
+      now I'm going to quit and cough back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?&rdquo; inquired the Virginian
+      as Molly rose. &ldquo;You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; said Molly, blithely. &ldquo;And you'll come?&rdquo; she added to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was on the Virginian's side. &ldquo;I must look after my horse,&rdquo; said I,
+      and went down to the corral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+      Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon. The
+      canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where I walked
+      the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where the
+      thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across the
+      silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he and
+      General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when
+      supper-time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account
+      to Mrs. Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he
+      was saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when you get old?&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am,&rdquo; said he, simply.
+      &ldquo;But I have a reason, and I am saving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the flowers,&rdquo; said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on the
+      table as Lin came hurrying out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told her,&rdquo; said he to the Southerner and me, &ldquo;that I've asked her
+      twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+      that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+      piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+      much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you.&rdquo; He took the
+      Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I began
+      to discern something quite definite at supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this,&rdquo; he
+      said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chap come into the round-up this afternoon,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;But he was
+      rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they wouldn't,&rdquo; said Tommy, haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's nothing in it,&rdquo; said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Taylor had not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said the Virginian, &ldquo;did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in the
+      mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good&mdash;not in her class o'
+      sports, smugglin' and such.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+      mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption,&rdquo; said the
+      Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talking of mountains,&rdquo; said Tommy, &ldquo;this range here used to be a great
+      place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the red
+      sons-of-guns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+      and quit him, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon,&rdquo; replied the Virginian, &ldquo;that the bull-fighter wore better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin',&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;My! but I'd like
+      to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+      maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+      grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made of
+      the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that Tommy
+      had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his campaigns.
+      But when the hour came for those visitors who were not spending the night
+      to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me, and I noticed the
+      Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed diversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't seem to make anything of it,&rdquo; whispered Taylor to Tommy, &ldquo;but the
+      ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I'll just explain&mdash;&rdquo; began Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't,&rdquo; whispered Lin, joining us. &ldquo;Yu' know how women are. Once they
+      take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+      him and me&rdquo; (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) &ldquo;must go back to
+      camp, for we're on second relief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+      house,&rdquo; said Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; said Tommy, &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' see,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+      nights ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't!&rdquo; cried Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course it ain't,&rdquo; drawled the ingenious Lin. &ldquo;But that's what I
+      say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from our
+      own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these nervous
+      notions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+      Riverside,&rdquo; repeated Taylor, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But just kind of stay here,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will!&rdquo; exclaimed Tommy. &ldquo;Of course, I'm glad to oblige.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than its
+      results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He was to be
+      kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they proposed to
+      visit his empty cabin and play tricks&mdash;but that would be too
+      childish, even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his
+      occasional partner in mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of the Crows,&rdquo; I satirically told the ladies, &ldquo;I shall sleep
+      outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid a
+      hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the galloping
+      horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and crossed to her
+      little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in that blessed
+      country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+      half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long, wild yell
+      now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no pistol&mdash;nothing.
+      In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought was &ldquo;House!
+      House!&rdquo; and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to the cabin, when
+      round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I understood. I saw the
+      Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw his teeth as he smiled. I
+      hastened to my blankets, and returned more decent to stand and watch the
+      two go shooting and yelling round the cabin, crazy with their youth. The
+      door was opened, and Taylor courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He
+      fired at the sky immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;B' gosh!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;That's one.&rdquo; He fired again. &ldquo;Out and at 'em.
+      They're running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+      white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots by
+      the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted and
+      joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about with
+      them, helping the din.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Taylor!&rdquo; said a voice. &ldquo;I didn't think it of you.&rdquo; It was Molly
+      Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+      She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, friends!&rdquo; said Taylor, gasping. &ldquo;She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+      I'd hate to have Bobbie&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak to your papa,&rdquo; said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll be gol-darned,&rdquo; said Taylor, surveying his costume, &ldquo;if Lin
+      McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where has Tommy got?&rdquo; said Mrs. Taylor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't yus see him?&rdquo; said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word in
+      all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+      Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+      plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; murmured the Virginian to himself, &ldquo;if I could have foresaw, I'd
+      not&mdash;it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+      perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything, and
+      presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent cabin,
+      mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the night at
+      Riverside, after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+      table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+      one when you think of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian how
+      the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush, bearing
+      the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the peace. She was
+      astride the horse he had brought for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he beat Tommy,&rdquo; said the Virginian. &ldquo;Some folks, anyway, get what
+      they want in this hyeh world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there was
+      no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this that
+      set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+      fertility of the soil&mdash;when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+      made&mdash;with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying
+      to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+      arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+      here&mdash;with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically,
+      that anything could fly&mdash;with wings. Then we would lead such a man
+      out and show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if
+      he was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+      thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+      Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+      Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him the
+      glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+      Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+      far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+      pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+      narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+      of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+      Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+      that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+      feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+      travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+      meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For purposes of amusement,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll admit anything you claim for
+      this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+      investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall,&rdquo; I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+      something to him &ldquo;for purposes of amusement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fellows come up with me to my office,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;I'll look
+      at my mail, and show you round.&rdquo; So we went with him through the heat and
+      sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is our park,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+      wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi&mdash;&rdquo; I checked
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ogden said &ldquo;with irrigation&rdquo; for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his letters
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you are, Ogden,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Here's the way we hump ahead out here.&rdquo;
+       And he read us the following:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&mdash;Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+      drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad to
+      furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully in
+      Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+      exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover, as
+      I said, merely my necessary expenses&mdash;say $350 (three hundred and
+      fifty dollars)&mdash;for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity
+      of rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction
+      of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+      what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+      twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;I am, respectfully yours,
+
+                                &ldquo;Robert Hilbrun&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the Legislature do it?&rdquo; inquired Ogden in good faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor laughed boisterously. &ldquo;I guess it wouldn't be
+      constitutional,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; said Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear man,&rdquo; the Governor protested, &ldquo;I know we're new, and our women
+      vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+      funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would fly
+      right into my back hair.&rdquo; Barker was also new as Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you have Senators here too?&rdquo; said Ogden, raising his eyebrows. &ldquo;What
+      do they look like? Are they females?&rdquo; And the Governor grew more
+      boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+      men were certainly &ldquo;out of sight&rdquo;. Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's an idea!&rdquo; cried the Governor. &ldquo;Nothing unconstitutional about
+      that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put up a hundred,&rdquo; said Ogden, promptly. &ldquo;I'm out for a Western
+      vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help of
+      some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised. &ldquo;He
+      won't care,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;whether it's a private enterprise or a
+      municipal step, so long as he gets his money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't get it, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said Ogden. &ldquo;But if he succeeds in tempting
+      Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you call those
+      people there on the horses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and looking
+      out over the plain toward Fort Russell. &ldquo;That is a cow-puncher and his
+      bride,&rdquo; I answered, recognizing the couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real cow-puncher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real bride?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's riding straddle!&rdquo; exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+      glasses. &ldquo;Why do you object to their union being holy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+      precipitately and against my advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he knew his business,&rdquo; observed Ogden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her&mdash;and
+      know him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+      to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at meeting
+      with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked at her,
+      and I instantly knew that Lin&mdash;the fool!&mdash;had confided to her my
+      disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+      your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, Mr. McLean,&rdquo; said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How're are yu', doctor,&rdquo; said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+      Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+      at Drybone. &ldquo;Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean,&rdquo; pursued the husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to a
+      Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+      haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+      would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at her,
+      extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her big,
+      dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+      compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+      flesh image, &ldquo;I'm glad I came.&rdquo; The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+      also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+      cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+      white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+      course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man that
+      wore them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in town?
+      Circus come yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Are you going to make a long stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. &ldquo;Till
+      we're tired of it, I guess,&rdquo; said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+      time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+      felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house lady, the
+      biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty, irrepressible
+      spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him, and now she was
+      going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at her too,
+      thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Lin,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if you stay here long enough you'll see a big show.&rdquo;
+       And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I told him
+      of the rain-maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+      entertained at our venture. &ldquo;Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me come
+      in&rdquo;; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised, he was
+      hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess,&rdquo; spoke the
+      image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I know
+      that Lin did. The image continued: &ldquo;Some folks and their money are soon
+      parted&rdquo;&mdash;she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I was
+      sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable opinion
+      of her&mdash;&ldquo;but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged ap!&rdquo;
+       This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says the
+      husband immediately started off on a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+      railroad ties, exclaiming: &ldquo;Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+      came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's who she is!&rdquo; said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+      once. &ldquo;I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+      somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!&rdquo; he
+      continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated &ldquo;Bigamy!&rdquo; &ldquo;Lots of them
+      marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on to a new
+      man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, I beg,&rdquo; said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. &ldquo;What does the law&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law?&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Look at that place!&rdquo; He swept his hand towards
+      the vast plains and the mountains. &ldquo;Ninety-five thousand square miles of
+      that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen yet on top
+      of the Rocky Mountains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the New-Yorker. &ldquo;But&mdash;but&mdash;well let A and B
+      represent first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does
+      A know about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say,&rdquo; the Governor answered, jovially. &ldquo;Can't generalize. Depends
+      on heaps of things&mdash;love&mdash;money&mdash;Did you go to college?
+      Well, let A minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come to lunch,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Barker, do you really know the first husband
+      is alive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn't dead last winter.&rdquo; And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss Katie
+      Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was wooed and won by
+      a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder, a bar-tender, a freight
+      hand, and was then hauling poles for the government. During his necessary
+      absences from home she, too, went out-of-doors. This he often discovered,
+      and would beat her, and she would then also beat him. After the beatings
+      one of them would always leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in
+      small-talk until Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. &ldquo;Lusk,&rdquo; said
+      the Governor, finishing his story, &ldquo;cried around the saloons for a couple
+      of days, and then went on hauling poles for the government, till at last
+      he said he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was
+      round Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay with
+      Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+      McLean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll notice,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;how she has got him under in three
+      weeks. Old hand, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Lin!&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky, I call him,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;He can quit her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn pretty
+      quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip. Hello! here
+      comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New York, Mr.
+      Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden.&rdquo; The Governor's
+      eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+      acquaintance,&rdquo; said the signal-service officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jode, when is it going to rain?&rdquo; said the Governor, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He has
+      the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+      representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+      themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in&mdash;I
+      think he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton
+      Manigault Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then,
+      but his health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black;
+      his face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a
+      spout&mdash;the same narrow size all the way down&mdash;and his voice was
+      as dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had
+      constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with his
+      dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted
+      apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much satisfaction
+      also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he came to see
+      that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was published,
+      and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen, along with
+      other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and he passed his
+      careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina impressiveness.
+      &ldquo;There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing pressure,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's what I thought,&rdquo; said the joyous Governor, &ldquo;so I'm going to
+      whoop her up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you expect to whoop up, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Atmosphere, and all that,&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Whole business has got to
+      get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir,&rdquo; said Jode, who enjoyed Barker as
+      some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we had
+      reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter had
+      actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers with
+      him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position. &ldquo;Have
+      your joke, sir,&rdquo; he said, waving a thin, clean hand, &ldquo;but I decline to
+      meet him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hilbrun?&rdquo; said the Governor, staring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that's his name&mdash;yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and
+      the Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glory!&rdquo; said the Governor. &ldquo;Well, I suppose not. I see your point, Jode.
+      I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+      Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure. All
+      very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+      consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow&mdash;too
+      slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+      does its business by is out of date.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite serious, sir,&rdquo; said Jode. &ldquo;And let me express my gratification
+      that you do see my point.&rdquo; So we changed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond those
+      who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed curiosity about
+      Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in the street that he was
+      disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the enterprise. &ldquo;But the boys
+      would fly right at it and stay with it if the round-up was near town, you
+      bet,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was walking alone. &ldquo;How's Mrs. McLean to-day?&rdquo; I inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's well,&rdquo; said Lin, turning his eye from mine. &ldquo;Who's your friend all
+      bugged up in English clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About as good a man as you,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and more cautious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him and his eye-glasses!&rdquo; said the sceptical puncher, still looking away
+      from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor. That
+      excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his teeth
+      shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telegram from Hilbrun,&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;be here to-morrow&rdquo;; and he hastened
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+      private,&rdquo; added Ogden. &ldquo;Great, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+      excitement mollified Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?&rdquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never. Have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+      excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're going to show the telegram to Jode,&rdquo; said the Governor; and he and
+      Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I must be getting along myself,&rdquo; said Lin; but he continued walking
+      slowly with me. &ldquo;Where're yu' bound?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere in particular,&rdquo; said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a little
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going to meet the train to-morrow?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's the
+      rule. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't wonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it'll be fun to see him try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See you to-morrow, Lin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure. A
+      hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after him,
+      pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the club,
+      telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had inquired
+      for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that he had
+      lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying &ldquo;I told you so&rdquo;
+       to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had not come
+      so home to me until our little walk together just now along the boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty&mdash;a
+      particular drink, the Allston cocktail. &ldquo;It's the bitters that does the
+      trick,&rdquo; he was saying, but saw me and called out: &ldquo;You ought to have been
+      with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read it
+      through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with his
+      anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get out he
+      sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so I said,
+      'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And Jode, he
+      quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your despatch is
+      genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!&rdquo; And the Governor slapped
+      his knee. &ldquo;Why, he's so set against Hilbrun,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I guess if he
+      knew of something he could explode to stop rain he'd let her fly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he wouldn't,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He'd not consider that honorable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; the Governor assented. &ldquo;Jode'll play fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise&mdash;a game between a
+      well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan. And
+      it was the charlatan had our sympathy&mdash;as all charlatans, whether
+      religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+      average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+      I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary and
+      the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the cart,
+      and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned out an
+      unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not remember
+      afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it was a hot
+      day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he put into the
+      cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance to the eye. He
+      desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his apparatus in the
+      building provided for him; and we set out for it at once. It was an
+      untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant might cut a hole
+      in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for the first time&mdash;a
+      tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak mouth. &ldquo;This is Mr.
+      Lusk,&rdquo; said the rain-maker; and we shook hands, Ogden and I exchanging a
+      glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill Street&mdash;or Capitol
+      Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has grown fuller of pomp and
+      emptier of prosperity&mdash;and I thought we made an unusual procession:
+      the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the way to the barn; the
+      cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his packed-up mysteries;
+      McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious bigamy; and in the rear,
+      Odgen nudging me in the ribs. That it was the correct Lusk we had with us
+      I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy, vacant appearance,
+      strong-bodied and shiftless&mdash;the sort of man to weary of one trade
+      and another, and make a failure of wife beating between whiles. In
+      Twenty-fourth Street&mdash;the town's uttermost rim&mdash;the Governor met
+      us, and stared at Lusk. &ldquo;Christopher!&rdquo; was his single observation; but he
+      never forgets a face&mdash;cannot afford to, now that he is in politics;
+      and, besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a man to whom
+      you owe ten dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you've quit hauling poles?&rdquo; said the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in it, sir,&rdquo; said Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?&rdquo; asked the
+      rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! going to throw your bombs through it?&rdquo; said the Governor, smiling
+      heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system, but
+      a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. &ldquo;Not that the bomb
+      don't produce first-class results at times and under circumstances,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;but it's uncertain and costly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told us
+      was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+      owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+      hole, which saved delay. &ldquo;And what day would you prefer the shower?&rdquo; said
+      Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any day would do,&rdquo; the Governor said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+      business to detain him from witnessing the shower&mdash;though it seemed
+      to me that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable
+      as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+      them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+      stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry and
+      hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw a sorry spectacle in the street&mdash;the bridegroom and the bride
+      shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+      paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a scarlet
+      parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of purchase
+      on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with splendor,
+      like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as well have
+      been behind, and his bearing was so different from his wonted
+      happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk.&rdquo; But it was &ldquo;Mrs. McLean&rdquo; I said, of course. She
+      gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, &ldquo;Come on, Lin,&rdquo; something like
+      a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a good-humored,
+      jocular answer, and said to me, &ldquo;It takes a woman to know what to buy for
+      house-keepin,&rdquo;; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared him to me more than
+      ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in keeping appearances,
+      but he deserved success, which the angels consider to be enough. I
+      wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were only the
+      preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but one test
+      could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs. Lusk, perhaps
+      not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant rain-maker kept
+      himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the north corner of
+      Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at all, haunted the
+      shops clear across town diagonally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+      building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+      the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+      sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+      contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+      pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+      Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+      about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing. The
+      Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+      twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+      chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+      doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+      there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the barn,
+      snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be chlorine,
+      the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part responsible;
+      and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The world was as
+      still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever; and the sky
+      over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours. This tenacity in
+      the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official pleasure. We could
+      tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor reminded him that no
+      rain was contracted for until the next day, he mentioned that the approach
+      of a storm is something that modern science is able to ascertain long in
+      advance; and he bade us come to his office whenever we pleased, and see
+      for ourselves what science said. This was, at any rate, something to fill
+      the afternoon with, and we went to him about five. Lin McLean joined us on
+      the way. I came upon him lingering alone in the street, and he told me
+      that Mrs. McLean was calling on friends. I saw that he did not know how to
+      spend the short recess or holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the
+      society of others, and with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He
+      had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found
+      pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode
+      received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his
+      instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hair hygrometer,&rdquo; he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it. &ldquo;The
+      indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of a prepared
+      human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the divided arc of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?&rdquo; called out the Governor, who
+      had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the tubes and
+      dials. &ldquo;What will this one do?&rdquo; he asked, and poked at a wet paper disc.
+      But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had to do with
+      evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention wandered, and he
+      was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly revolved and set a
+      number of dial hands going different ways. &ldquo;Hi!&rdquo; said the Governor,
+      delighted. &ldquo;Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air velocity in feet.
+      Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What you'll need,
+      Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor,&rdquo; Jode retorted at once.
+      &ldquo;And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+      there.&rdquo; He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+      crystal. &ldquo;An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen,&rdquo; Jode
+      continued&mdash;though none of us would have said anything like that&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+      corroborated, as you will find you must admit.&rdquo; Jode's voice was almost
+      threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+      passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers; I
+      caught the fleeting sound of words like &ldquo;meniscus&rdquo; and &ldquo;terrestrial
+      minimum thermometer,&rdquo; and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some
+      calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand&mdash;a
+      series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers
+      all over the United States. He read each one through from date of
+      signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. &ldquo;And
+      I tell you,&rdquo; Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, &ldquo;there's no
+      chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,&rdquo;&mdash;he was shrieking
+      jubilantly&mdash;&ldquo;there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; said
+      the Governor. &ldquo;I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+      scientist. &ldquo;That's what they all say,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'll do my talking
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any of you gentlemen, or your friends,&rdquo; said Assistant Lusk, stepping
+      up, &ldquo;feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to accommodate
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do yu' want this evenin'?&rdquo; said Lin McLean, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five to one,&rdquo; said Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go yu' in twenties,&rdquo; said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived this
+      was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out&mdash;or what of
+      it still survived his bride's shopping. &ldquo;Will you hold stakes, doctor?&rdquo; he
+      said to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five to
+      one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and then
+      me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered our
+      bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next morning. I
+      have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a universal search
+      for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes instantly whipped out
+      his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and disqualified himself. It
+      was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but was anxious to serve, and
+      thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze anywhere,
+      and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was freely
+      offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so she might
+      wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed husband
+      rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad of money
+      staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented their lack
+      of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that it was
+      Sunday, and the banks closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside the hot
+      town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube, the possible
+      smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the extraordinary
+      assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one restless and
+      eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella. In a moment
+      the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs. Old Judge
+      Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast progress of
+      science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the well-known
+      legend, &ldquo;I am somewhat of a liar myself.&rdquo; And all the while the sun shone
+      high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the certainty of
+      victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came from church, and
+      no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with a chill smile, that
+      he had visited his instruments and found no new indications. Fifteen
+      minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden, padded, dropsical clouds
+      were born in the blue above our heads. They blackened, and a smart shower,
+      the first in two months, wet us all, and ceased. The sun blazed out, and
+      the sky came blue again, like those rapid, unconvincing weather changes of
+      the drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things on
+      earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized upon
+      Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+      punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger and
+      acquaintance: &ldquo;It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me&rdquo;' And the crowd
+      would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as he went
+      proclaiming to the world. &ldquo;A failure, sir! The fellow's an impostor, as I
+      well knew. It's no half-inch!&rdquo; Which was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you got to say to that?&rdquo; we asked Hilbrun, swarming around him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll just keep cool,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;it's only the first instalment.
+      In about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+      open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+      herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+      Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences and
+      sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down door-steps,
+      women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the chattering Jode
+      flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge Burrage apostrophized
+      Providence in his front yard, with the postmaster's label still pinned to
+      his back. Nobody minded the sluicing downpour&mdash;this second instalment
+      was much more of a thing than the first&mdash;and Hilbrun alone kept a
+      calm exterior&mdash;the face of the man who lifts a heavy dumb-bell and
+      throws an impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no
+      means thus proof against success I saw him put a bottle back in his
+      pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage,
+      perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded toward him,
+      extending the hand of congratulation. &ldquo;Mr. Hilbrun,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I am Judge
+      Burrage&mdash;the Honorable T. Coleman Burrage&mdash;and I will say that I
+      am most favorably impressed with your shower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His shower!&rdquo; yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?&rdquo; said Lin McLean, grinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jode, ignoring the
+      facetious puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're mistaken,&rdquo; said Hilbrun, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's short he don't get his money,&rdquo; said some ignoble subscriber
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he will,&rdquo; said the Governor, &ldquo;or I'm a short. He's earned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet &ldquo;' said Lin. &ldquo;Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+      doctor, I'll chip&mdash;Shucks!&rdquo; Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket; he
+      remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now possessed
+      possibly two dollars in silver, all told. &ldquo;I can't chip in, doctor,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's filling up on the
+      prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest show I've ever saw.
+      You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!&rdquo; And Lin clapped the rain-maker on the
+      shoulder, exulting. He had been too well entertained to care what he had
+      in his pocket, and his wife had not yet occurred to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under half
+      an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we stood
+      talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to Jode,
+      saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously with these,
+      riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out the rain had
+      flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from as far as
+      thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a cloud. It
+      staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the rain-maker, &ldquo;I'm packed up, and my train'll be
+      along soon&mdash;would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+      word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely performed
+      his side of the contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think different, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But I'll unpack and let that
+      train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay me&rdquo;
+       (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence)
+      &ldquo;I'll flood your town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in the
+      total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards and
+      precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+      unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm obliged,&rdquo; said Hilbrun, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had foreseen, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jode, too deeply grieved now to feel
+      anger, &ldquo;that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing your
+      money through this&mdash;this absurd occurrence, I would have declined to
+      help you. It becomes my duty,&rdquo; he continued, turning coldly to the
+      inebriated Lusk, &ldquo;to hand this to you, sir.&rdquo; And the assistant lurchingly
+      stuffed his stakes away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's worth it,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;He's welcome to my cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that you say, Lin McLean?&rdquo; It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+      surged to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm broke. He's got it. That's all,&rdquo; said Lin, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Broke! You!&rdquo; She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+      preliminary howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. &ldquo;It's my darling Kate,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Why, Kate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean; for
+      everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first
+      wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying
+      to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at
+      sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off.
+      The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and
+      affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel, indifferent
+      to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at Lin. &ldquo;Don't yus
+      dare lay yer finger on my husband, you sage-brush bigamist!&rdquo; is what the
+      marvelous female said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bigamist?&rdquo; repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. &ldquo;I ain't,&rdquo; he said to
+      Ogden and me. &ldquo;I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+      before ever I come acrosst yus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and him?&rdquo; murmured the puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her and me,&rdquo; whimpered Lusk. &ldquo;Sidney.&rdquo; He sat up with a limp, confiding
+      stare at everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney who?&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; corrected Lusk, crossly&mdash;&ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice. But
+      the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are yu', anyway&mdash;when yu' ain't drunk?&rdquo; demanded Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as good a man as you, and better,&rdquo; snorted the guardian angel. &ldquo;Give
+      him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska&mdash;&rdquo; Lin began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew&mdash;&ldquo;Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the rain-maker. &ldquo;That's the west-bound. I'm
+      perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+      Salt Lake City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo; shouted Lin McLean. &ldquo;Him and Jim's going to work it again! For
+      goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+      the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+      Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten, and
+      ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his duties
+      should detain him. But Jode went!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he to Ogden, McLean, and
+      me, &ldquo;and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way are yu' bettin'?&rdquo; Lin asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my principles, sir,&rdquo; answered the little signal-service officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect I ain't got any,&rdquo; said the puncher. &ldquo;It's Jim I'm backin' this
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;I want to talk to you.&rdquo; We went into another car, and
+      I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?&rdquo; the
+      puncher said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean I ought to have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all the
+      same. Yu' have good friends, and all that.&rdquo; He looked out of the window.
+      &ldquo;Laramie already!&rdquo; he commented, and got out and walked by himself on the
+      platform until we had started again. &ldquo;Yu' have good friends,&rdquo; he pursued,
+      settling himself so his long legs were stretched and comfortable, &ldquo;and
+      they tell yu' things, and you tell them things. And when it don't make no
+      particular matter one way or the other, yu' give 'em your honest opinion
+      and talk straight to 'em, and they'll come to you the same way. So that
+      when yu're ridin' the range alone sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things
+      over on top maybe of some dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about
+      some fellow yu' know mighty well, 'There's a man is a good friend of
+      mine.' And yu' mean it. And it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced
+      in a while they're bound to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the
+      man then&mdash;your good friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be.
+      Standin' off, keepin' his mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail
+      out. If he tried to show it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks!
+      Circumstances have showed me the trail this time, you bet!&rdquo; And the
+      puncher's face, which had been sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly
+      hand on my knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trail's pretty simple,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu',&rdquo; said Lin, with the air
+      of having made a discovery, &ldquo;when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs in
+      this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his dyin'.
+      I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell their
+      wives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never was married,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no more was I. Let's go to bed.&rdquo; And Lin shook my hand, and
+      gave me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western holiday,
+      we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against rain&mdash;only
+      I noticed that those of the true faith were less free. Indeed; the Mormon,
+      the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine have a nice prudence in
+      money. During our brief stay we visited the sights: floating in the lake,
+      listening to pins drop in the gallery of the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of
+      saints in robes speaking from heaven to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes
+      of a modern farm-hand, and in the street we heard at a distance a
+      strenuous domestic talk between the new&mdash;or perhaps I should say the
+      original&mdash;husband and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's corralled Sidney's cash!&rdquo; said the delighted Lin. &ldquo;He can't bet
+      nothing on this shower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, after all, this time&mdash;it didn't rain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased a
+      return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went somewhere
+      else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the money,
+      retained him with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good luck to yu', Sidney!&rdquo; said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+      since Cheyenne. &ldquo;I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married.&rdquo; He paid
+      no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that she
+      threw after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jode also felt &ldquo;a heap better.&rdquo; Legitimate science had triumphed. To-day,
+      most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a coincidence. South
+      Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin the few dollars that
+      I had lent the puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will you do now?&rdquo; I said to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+      keep a single man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+      lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it
+      between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew absent
+      as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a slight
+      pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be more in
+      seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children to whom his
+      excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had put off this
+      regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom, and now he was
+      setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely planless among the
+      guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround him. As he reached
+      the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed from a distance, and,
+      turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into town from the plain. One
+      who had shouted to him galloped out from the others, rounded the Capitol's
+      enclosure, and, approaching with radiant countenance leaned to reach the
+      hand of the Governor, and once again greeted him with a hilarious &ldquo;Hello,
+      Doc!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several years,
+      hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and, inquiring who
+      might be the other riders behind, was told that they were Shorty,
+      Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. &ldquo;And dandies to hit town
+      with,&rdquo; Mr. McLean added. &ldquo;Red-hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am acquainted with them,&rdquo; assented his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks,&rdquo; the cow-puncher continued,
+      &ldquo;makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every day.
+      So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to feed
+      high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+      holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+      their coming rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've soured on scenery,&rdquo; he finished, in his drastic idiom. &ldquo;We're sick
+      of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call on me,&rdquo; remarked the Governor, cheerily, &ldquo;when you're ready for
+      bromides and sulphates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't box-headed no more,&rdquo; protested Mr. McLean; &ldquo;I've got maturity,
+      Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+      hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+      That's my rule.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That your rule, too?&rdquo; inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye, and
+      Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+      expressionless upon their horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain't talkin', we're waitin',&rdquo; observed Chalkeye; and the three cynics
+      smiled amiably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Doc, see yu' again,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+      brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or came
+      up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+      unsuspecting Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your hurry?&rdquo; said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty manner.
+      &ldquo;Come along with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christmasing,&rdquo; replied Fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'm buying toys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toys! You? What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, some kids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yourn?&rdquo; screeched Lin, precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+      for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he held
+      up for the edification of the hasty McLean. &ldquo;Not mine, I'm happy to say.
+      My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me uncle, and
+      climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think it's a girl,
+      and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these little folks at
+      Christmas they'd be wondering&mdash;not the kids, they just break your
+      toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder&mdash;'What's the
+      matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on us?'&mdash;that's
+      where the strain comes!&rdquo; he broke off, facing Mr. McLean with another
+      spacious laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran on
+      exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and intent,
+      and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+      Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+      outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+      drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a stick,
+      and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too much, and
+      you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie, and&mdash;well,
+      I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in luck. Christmas
+      don't trouble a chap fixed like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A chap fixed like you!&rdquo; The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. &ldquo;No,
+      sure.&rdquo; He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+      going down the road. &ldquo;That's a new idea&mdash;Christmas,&rdquo; he murmured, for
+      it was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+      his first long trousers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comes once a year pretty regular,&rdquo; remarked the prosperous Governor.
+      &ldquo;Seems often when you pay the bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't made a Christmas gift,&rdquo; pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily, &ldquo;not
+      for&mdash;for&mdash;Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know
+      anybody that has any right to look for such a thing from me.&rdquo; This was
+      indeed a new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; said Barker, briskly, &ldquo;there goes twelve o'clock. I've got to
+      make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+      in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with
+      the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+      imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he
+      struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some
+      omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look up,
+      and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him go,
+      and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his speed when Lin
+      overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they took a side
+      street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and wrote it as he
+      walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and met face to face
+      with Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boys are seein' after my horse,&rdquo; Lin rapidly began, &ldquo;and I've got to
+      meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu' see,
+      and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to&mdash;&rdquo; Here
+      Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. &ldquo;Doc,
+      I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'&mdash;them monkeys, yu'
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind, and
+      was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending selections.
+      A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple of dolls rose
+      nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an imperfect honesty that
+      he said, &ldquo;You'll help me a heap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Lin, quite sincere, replied, &ldquo;Thank yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+      Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+      good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+      the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has
+      been as good as another in three places&mdash;Paradise before the Fall;
+      the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+      Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as young
+      as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+      thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known the
+      cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without breeding
+      contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder and drew
+      him among the petticoats and toys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+      not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+      world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+      together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+      children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+      the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin saw
+      them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+      hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+      thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of
+      the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that
+      undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human
+      face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding
+      eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children escaped
+      from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and
+      meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with rabbits
+      and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the sound of
+      musical boxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+      human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+      talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours, and
+      whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed knit in
+      a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses must have
+      been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after much nice
+      adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both ends meeting,
+      and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that his children
+      must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step toward them. There
+      were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at
+      that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with
+      competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away
+      in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier. But here was not the
+      moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place.
+      The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon their errands, and
+      aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a spirit looking on from
+      the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving needs and kindnesses of man
+      were within arm's touch of him, he was locked outside with his impulses.
+      Barker had, in the natural press of customers, long parted from him, to
+      become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of
+      his mission accomplished, he was ready to go on to the next place, and
+      turned to beckon McLean. He found him obliterated in a corner beside a
+      life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks livelier than you do,&rdquo; said the hearty Governor. &ldquo;'Fraid it's
+      been slow waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. &ldquo;No, I guess not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+      &ldquo;You never did lie to me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;long as I've known you. Well, never
+      mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. &ldquo;Say Doc,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what do
+      yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A big practice&mdash;big enough to interfere with my politics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else? Things and truck, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they? Don't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you're in earnest!&rdquo; cried his Excellency. &ldquo;That's simply rich!&rdquo;
+       Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town &ldquo;heeled for a big
+      time,&rdquo; finds that presents are all the rage, and must immediately give
+      somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous Frontier! So thought the
+      good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial misconception. &ldquo;My dear
+      fellow,&rdquo; he added, meaning as well as possible, &ldquo;I don't want you to spend
+      your money on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got plenty all right,&rdquo; said Lin, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with you.
+      You didn't expect anything from me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ain't&mdash;that don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+      Here's our shop.&rdquo; They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+      counters. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; pursued the Governor, &ldquo;this is for a very particular
+      friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+      number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision after
+      one look. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+      Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+      pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound, or,
+      at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned that
+      there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. &ldquo;I know that
+      Tennyson is what she&mdash;is what's wanted,&rdquo; he muttered; and, feeling
+      himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture he
+      took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand, found
+      himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and the
+      cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all people.
+      Barker picked it up and gave it back. &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; he said, mirthful over
+      his own inclination to be annoyed; &ldquo;you can't do that. I'm just as much
+      obliged, Lin,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as a loan, Doc&mdash;some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp young lady
+      was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily for Tennyson's
+      expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his discountenanced savings
+      back into his clothes. Making haste to leave the book department of this
+      shop, they regained a mutual ease, and the Governor became waggish over
+      Lin's concern at being too rich. He suggested to him the list of
+      delinquent taxpayers and the latest census from which to select indigent
+      persons. He had patients, too, whose inveterate pennilessness he could
+      swear cheerfully to&mdash;&ldquo;since you want to bolt from your own money,&rdquo; he
+      remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm a green horse,&rdquo; assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; &ldquo;ain't used to
+      the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From his face&mdash;that jocular mask&mdash;one might have counted him the
+      most serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+      voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be, would
+      have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering body, but
+      Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean of old
+      days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy ground.
+      &ldquo;I've got it!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;give your wife something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+      with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+      and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+      &ldquo;If you'll give me her name and address,&rdquo; said he, with the future
+      entirely in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Laramie!&rdquo; and the Governor feigned surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Doc,&rdquo; said Lin, uneasily, &ldquo;none of 'em ain't married me since I saw
+      yu' last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she hasn't written from Laramie,&rdquo; said the hilarious Governor, and
+      Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; went
+      on Barker, &ldquo;I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mask fell now. &ldquo;You're talking of his wife, not mine,&rdquo; said the
+      cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; &ldquo;and, Doc, I'm going to say
+      a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll never
+      forget that day myself&mdash;but I don't want to be reminded of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a fool, Lin,&rdquo; said the Governor, generous instantly. &ldquo;I never
+      supposed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way&mdash;in
+      a way&mdash;&rdquo; Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker,
+      seeing how wistful his face had turned, waited. &ldquo;But I ain't quite the
+      same fool I was before that happened to me,&rdquo; the cow-puncher resumed,
+      &ldquo;though maybe my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was
+      better luck than a man like me had any call to look for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sobered Barker said, simply, &ldquo;Yes, Lin.&rdquo; He was put to thinking by
+      these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick, red
+      cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole knowledge
+      of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle and took her
+      fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife to the best of
+      his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were confident he would
+      never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival and beating him had
+      swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the marriage was an
+      inadvertence. &ldquo;He jest bumped into it before he could pull up,&rdquo; they
+      explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's sporting blood,
+      had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali. For the new-made
+      husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that came upon him he
+      tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before, and learned also
+      how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink beneath the man in
+      baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived innocent until this
+      time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so that citizens in
+      Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued shrewdly that men
+      of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the strain had broken
+      his endurance an unexpected first husband, named Lusk, had appeared one
+      Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving, and exceedingly drunk. To the
+      arms of Lusk she went back in the public street, deserting McLean in the
+      presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne saw this, and learned how she had
+      been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed
+      loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too, and went about his business, ready to
+      swagger at the necessary moment, and with the necessary kind of joke
+      always ready to shield his hurt spirit. And soon, of course, the matter
+      grew stale, seldom raked up in the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at
+      work; so lately he had begun to remember other things beside the
+      smouldering humiliation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she with him?&rdquo; he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+      told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the moral
+      that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and revealed
+      the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he quieted
+      the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote about the house
+      of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on Mondays,
+      Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days, thus getting
+      one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined his opinion of the
+      family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker detailed these
+      incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs. Lusk addicted to
+      opium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em,&rdquo; said McLean, grimly, &ldquo;if I
+      strike Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?&rdquo; Barker
+      ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only&mdash;yu' see now. A man gets
+      tired pretending&mdash;onced in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+      Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+      shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+      hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness of
+      the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys. He had
+      come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and well
+      disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing with each
+      other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of hurry to escape
+      from that loneliness where his human promptings had been lodged with him
+      useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale, and he with his
+      pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of Shorty, and Chalkeye,
+      and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with, he stepped out with a
+      brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and a foretaste of a good
+      time coming that he put on his town clothes, after shaving and admiring
+      himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate away and drank with a
+      robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even himself at first. But the
+      sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for all he could do. As he groped
+      for the contentment which he saw around him he began to receive the jokes
+      with counterfeit mirth. Memories took the place of anticipation, and
+      through their moody shiftings he began to feel a distaste for the company
+      of his friends and a shrinking from their lively voices. He blamed them
+      for this at once. He was surprised to think he had never recognized before
+      how light a weight was Shorty; and here was Chalkeye, who knew better,
+      talking religion after two glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his
+      friends' shortcomings mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont,
+      changed at a stroke. &ldquo;I'm celebrating no Christmas with this crowd,&rdquo; said
+      the inner man; and when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their
+      hilarity he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to meet
+      a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station, buying
+      a ticket for Denver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denver!&rdquo; exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I said,&rdquo; stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; went his Excellency. &ldquo;What are you going to do there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get good and drunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm drinking champagne this trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+      moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+      after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+      inside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he says he's got maturity,&rdquo; Barker muttered. &ldquo;I've known him since
+      seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along.&rdquo; The
+      Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+      Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+      fool. &ldquo;Yes, about eight. Or six,&rdquo; said his Excellency, justifying himself
+      by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen, supreme in
+      length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling for an early
+      mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished, he had mended
+      the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and Lin's utter
+      health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon overflowed with
+      the pride of science, and over the bandages would explain the human body
+      technically to his wild-eyed and flattered patient. Thus young Lin heard
+      all about tibia, and comminuted, and other glorious new words, and when
+      sleepless would rehearse them. Then, with the bone so nearly knit that the
+      patient might leave the ward on crutches to sit each morning in Barker's
+      room as a privilege, the disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out
+      of the hospital and hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and
+      variety waited for a languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was
+      soon carried back with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's surgical rage was
+      disarmed, the patient was so forlorn over his doctor's professional
+      chagrin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?&rdquo; he had said, humbly,
+      after a new week of bed and weights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+      son-of-a-gun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+      walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all and
+      in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had missed
+      the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected thing, and
+      he in the late end of his twenties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,&rdquo; said
+      Barker. &ldquo;Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+      omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+      first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked the
+      smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin took
+      Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw a
+      saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+      should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher over
+      there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly. In
+      such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to enjoy
+      without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he looked
+      along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric lights,
+      and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried &ldquo;Shine?
+      Shine?&rdquo; at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the right to
+      get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of stopping at
+      all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a few yards, and it
+      was across the street. This one being attained and appreciated, he found
+      that he must cross back again or skip number four. At this rate he would
+      not be dining in time to see much of the theatre, and he stopped to
+      consider. It was a German place he had just quitted, and a huge light
+      poured out on him from its window, which the proprietor's father-land
+      sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone among a well-set pine forest,
+      where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots and reached upward to Santa Claus;
+      he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held in his right hand forever a foaming
+      glass, and forever in his left a string of sausages that dangled down
+      among the gnomes. With his American back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing
+      the same serious, absent face he had not changed since he ran away from
+      himself at Cheyenne, considered carefully the Hot Scotch question, and
+      which side of the road to take and stick to, while the little bootblacks
+      found him once more and cried, &ldquo;Shine? Shine?&rdquo; monotonous as snow-birds.
+      He settled to stay over here with the south-side Scotches, and the little
+      one-note song reaching his attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the
+      nearest boy, who lightly sprang away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to touch him!&rdquo; piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+      short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't hit me,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean &ldquo;I'm innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you leave him be,&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;New!&rdquo; said Billy, in scorn. &ldquo;Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+      is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a special!&rdquo; shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. &ldquo;He's got a
+      badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+      scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. &ldquo;Dare you
+      to arrest me!&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll you give me not to?&rdquo; inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+      pockets, arms akimbo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing; I've done nothing,&rdquo; announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+      last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and he,
+      too, sped into the middle of the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he claim you lifted?&rdquo; inquired the leader, with eagerness. &ldquo;Tell
+      him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!&rdquo; they
+      screamed to the special officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, &ldquo;you're poor judges of
+      a badge, you fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+      window. &ldquo;Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here,&rdquo; said he,
+      following his sprightly invention, &ldquo;he'd get arrested himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+      the last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's your idea,&rdquo; pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+      cautious steps nearer the curb, &ldquo;that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+      red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug&mdash;why,
+      I'll get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+      their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy!&rdquo; wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+      fascinated. &ldquo;Not having three feet,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, always grave
+      and slow, &ldquo;I can only give two this here job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got a big pistol and a belt!&rdquo; exulted the leader, who had
+      precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a smart boy,&rdquo; said Lin, considering him, &ldquo;and yu' find a man out
+      right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they fix
+      the boots&mdash;and a dollar goes to the quickest through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a boot,
+      with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a Colt.45 you've got,&rdquo; ventured he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+      angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm through!&rdquo; sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+      bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+      arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly referee,&rdquo; said he, forgivingly, to the leader, &ldquo;and
+      decide which of them smears is the awfulest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that saves me money,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket. &ldquo;I
+      guess you've both won.&rdquo; He handed each of them a dollar. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+      dollar for the best shine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played his
+      mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+      against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+      in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out his
+      beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher perceived,
+      and Billy no seasoned expert. &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; said Lin, stooping, &ldquo;I'll show
+      yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough to steer
+      anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with a dry
+      brush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lemme,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;I've got to learn.&rdquo; So he finished the boot his own
+      way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this event was
+      also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both parties. So
+      here was their work done, and more money in their pockets than from all
+      the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and Billy did not wish
+      for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune as soon as might be.
+      Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window, drawn by curiosity near
+      this new kind of man whose voice held them and whose remarks dropped them
+      into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted leader had been unable to go
+      away and nurse his pride alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that a secret society?&rdquo; inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+      badge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean nodded. &ldquo;Turruble,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a Wells &amp; Fargo detective,&rdquo; asserted the leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play your harp,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a&mdash;a desperaydo?&rdquo; whispered Towhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my!&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean, sadly; &ldquo;what has our Jack been readin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a cattle-man!&rdquo; cried Billy. &ldquo;I seen his heels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; said the discovered puncher, with approval. &ldquo;You'll do. But
+      I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to do
+      this night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&mdash;are&mdash;sworn&mdash;don't yu' jump, now, and give me away&mdash;sworn&mdash;to&mdash;blow
+      off three bootblacks to a dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, pshaw!&rdquo; They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up&mdash;for I
+      have it to do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+      Cant'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't waste my time on such smart boys,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, rising lazily
+      to his full height from the window-sill. &ldquo;I am goin' somewhere to find
+      boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+      they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+      followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+      window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+      stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+      broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few remarks.
+      He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that would have
+      led to conversation under almost any circumstances save these; but the
+      minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole state of things for
+      them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr. McLean in silence, at a
+      wary interval, and with their mouths, during most of the journey, open.
+      The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk, and the unusual dollars,
+      wakened wide their bent for the unexpected, their street affinity for the
+      spur of the moment; they believed slimly in the turkey part of it, but
+      what this man might do next, to be there when he did it, and not to be
+      trapped, kept their wits jumping deliciously; so when they saw him stop,
+      they stopped instantly too, ten feet out of reach. This was Denver's most
+      civilized restaurant&mdash;that one which Mr. McLean had remembered, with
+      foreign dishes and private rooms, where he had promised himself, among
+      other things, champagne. Mr. McLean had never been inside it, but heard a
+      tale from a friend; and now he caught a sudden sight of people among
+      geraniums, with plumes and white shirt-fronts, very elegant. It must have
+      been several minutes that he stood contemplating the entrance and the
+      luxurious couples who went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plumb French!&rdquo; he observed at length; and then, &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; in a key less
+      confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. &ldquo;They're
+      eatin' patty de parley-voo in there,&rdquo; he muttered, and the three
+      bootblacks came beside him. &ldquo;Say, fellows,&rdquo; said Lin, confidingly, &ldquo;I
+      wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm after
+      a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a fit.
+      What do yu' say, boys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you come along with us&mdash;we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+      there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose yer.&rdquo;
+       So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they clustered
+      about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started obediently,
+      and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christmas is comin' now, sure,&rdquo; said Lin, grinning to himself. &ldquo;It ain't
+      exactly what I figured on.&rdquo; It was the first time he had laughed since
+      Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with the new
+      warmth in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+      suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they went
+      along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+      Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and then
+      stole at him a doubtful look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+      presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+      precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and the
+      oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and several
+      choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient; and to
+      witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket and its
+      wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the guests a
+      transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as frankly
+      ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all grew
+      fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr. McLean
+      stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a cigarette?&rdquo; said the leader, over his pie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank yu',&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me.&rdquo; He had devised
+      a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chewin's no good at meals,&rdquo; continued the boy. &ldquo;Don't you use tobaccer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Onced in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader spat brightly. &ldquo;He ain't learned yet,&rdquo; said he, slanting his
+      elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. &ldquo;But beer, now&mdash;I
+      never seen anything in it.&rdquo; He and Towhead soon left Billy and his callow
+      profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that silenced him,
+      and set him listening with all his admiring young might. Nor did Mr.
+      McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this knowledge, which
+      seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be goshed,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+      streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now.&rdquo; But now
+      the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive apprenticeship.
+      &ldquo;Hello, boys!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that theatre's got a big start on us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+      topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+      and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. &ldquo;This man here will look out
+      for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the
+      highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+      icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+      effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced so
+      helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain Grant had
+      been tracking their father all over the equator and other scenic spots,
+      and now the north pole was about to impale them. The Captain's youngest
+      child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a sudden motion, loudly
+      shouted, &ldquo;Sister, the ice is closing in!&rdquo; and she replied, chastely, &ldquo;Then
+      let us pray.&rdquo; It was a superb tableau: the ice split, and the sun rose and
+      joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop fell, and male Denver, wrung
+      to its religious deeps, went out to the rum-shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+      applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+      Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+      south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+      lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out in
+      him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+      unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think this is splendid?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Splendid,&rdquo; Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humming,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, young fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it must be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to do
+      what she wanted him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that boat,
+      and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends feel bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly expect they would,&rdquo; replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+      mindful of Billy, &ldquo;except there wasn't nothin' else they could think of,&rdquo;
+       he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+      off with a pole. Wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Butted her like a ram,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+      a-going to, an' he&mdash;I think he is a flubdub anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet he is!&rdquo; said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+      guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his knees.
+      An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them putting up
+      any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an' I says, 'Dare
+      you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing, an' I'd not pray
+      for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you pray much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Lin, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell. 'You
+      lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard the
+      first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that mad! But
+      I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' must have felt like a millionaire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+      saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked by
+      her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any time.
+      Lemme see your pistol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;After this show is through I'll put it on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest? Silver-tips?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O-h! I never shot a bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd ought to try it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to see
+      you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?&rdquo; Billy
+      had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+      it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy. As
+      with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he met&mdash;the
+      few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite play for
+      him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+      gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. &ldquo;Laramie!&rdquo; said he, almost
+      shouting it. &ldquo;Yu'&mdash;yu'&mdash;is your name Lusk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. &ldquo;You're not going to take me
+      home?&rdquo; he piteously wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven and heavens!&rdquo; murmured Lin McLean. &ldquo;So you're her kid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+      length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by a
+      brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+      aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+      little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+      in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the boy,
+      and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+      dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+      that should restore the perished confidence. &ldquo;Why did yu' lead him off?&rdquo;
+       he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know; but
+      as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and more
+      sorrowful. &ldquo;I just hate him to think that of me,&rdquo; he reflected. The
+      curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they should
+      all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain Grant grew
+      hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin sat saying to
+      himself a number of contradictions. &ldquo;He's nothing to me; what's any of
+      them to me?&rdquo; Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he restated the facts of
+      the past. &ldquo;Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before she'd ever laid eyes on
+      me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never even my step-kid.&rdquo; The
+      past, however, brought no guidance. &ldquo;Lord, what's the thing to do about
+      this? If I had any home&mdash;This is a stinkin' world in some respects,&rdquo;
+       said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the chair beneath which
+      the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband. They took it for emotion
+      over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and their backs shook. Presently
+      each turned, and saw the singular man with untamed, wide-open eyes
+      glowering at the stage, and both backs shook again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more his hand was laid on Billy. &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; The boy glanced at him, and
+      quickly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me, and listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy swervingly obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+      Are yu' listenin' good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: &ldquo;You've got no call to
+      believe what I say to yu'&mdash;yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
+      So I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I saw
+      yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw all I
+      want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If yu' happen
+      to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come around to
+      Smith's Palace&mdash;that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?&mdash;and if
+      yu' don't come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night
+      I'm liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
+      to yourself. I've appreciated your company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds in
+      it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. &ldquo;It's a lost boy&mdash;a
+      runaway,&rdquo; he told the clerk. &ldquo;He'll not be extra clean, I expect, if he
+      does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut out
+      to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+      walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+      minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+      Pike's Peak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention, came
+      stepping along. &ldquo;I'm not a-going back to Laramie,&rdquo; he stated, warningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+      good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner&mdash;I'm dead sleepy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O-h!&rdquo; Billy stood blank. &ldquo;I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+      lemme black your boots in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not sure my train don't go too early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do yu' sleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to
+      hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt round
+      his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders outside the
+      accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did it ever kill a man?&rdquo; asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+      killin' me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+      they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen.&rdquo; He brought out the
+      relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. &ldquo;I foun' it myself,
+      camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+      but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+      she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's Kelley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's how
+      she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran then.
+      An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her spell&mdash;an'
+      father can't stop her, an' I&mdash;ah, I was sick of it! She's lamed me up
+      twice beating me&mdash;an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless my
+      mother!' a-getting up and a-going to bed&mdash;he's a flubdub! An' so I
+      cleared out. But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father&mdash;an'
+      you. I'll do it now if you say it's any sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. &ldquo;Don't yu' do it now,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't like mother,&rdquo; Billy continued. &ldquo;You can keep that.&rdquo; He came
+      to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside him. &ldquo;Do
+      you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five kinds&mdash;sage-hen,
+      an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more kinds harder&mdash;but I
+      couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought the magpie's, though. D'
+      you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you stay to-morrow an' I'll show you
+      that en' some other things I got the engine-man lets me keep there, for
+      there's boys that would steal an egg. An' I could take you where we could
+      fire that pistol. Bet you don't know what that is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were things
+      that rattled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean gave it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with the
+      engine-man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+      first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+      but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience made
+      him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare his
+      little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for the
+      child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+      dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+      inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+      hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+      in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man held
+      him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion that Billy
+      would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him, suggesting that
+      bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it was, rose and
+      undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The arms and legs
+      seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred conveniently; and
+      directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small frame burrowed down,
+      without the opening of an eye or a change in the breathing. Lin stood some
+      time by the bedside, with his eyes on the long, curling lashes and the
+      curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the door of the room, and at
+      himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and kissed Billy on the forehead,
+      and, rising from that, gave himself a hangdog stare in the mirror, and
+      soon in his own bed was sleeping the sound sleep of health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering with
+      his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became slowly
+      aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and he waked
+      wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room filled with
+      the bells and the sun of the winter's day. &ldquo;Where have I struck now?&rdquo; he
+      inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his mind, he raised
+      himself on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're awful late,&rdquo; said Responsibility. &ldquo;But I weren't a-going without
+      telling you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go?&rdquo; exclaimed Lin. &ldquo;Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+      breakfast alone?&rdquo; The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+      Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more than
+      he could do!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay&mdash;why, you
+      said you was a-going by the early train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the durned thing's got away on me,&rdquo; said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+      the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I hadn't a-promised them&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're a-going to have fun to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+      he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just as
+      leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived here.
+      Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?&rdquo; inquired the artful McLean.
+      &ldquo;That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty minutes! If they'd wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought to
+      waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+      engagements, yu' see&mdash;for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+      treat a man that way now, could he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course he couldn't,&rdquo; said Billy, brightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas, that
+      only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's Billy?'
+      They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll explain to
+      us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy with
+      a convincing eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; said Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out of
+      Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now, Bill,
+      what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just you and
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like that,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Is it all day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinkin' of all day,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I'll not make yu' do anything yu'd
+      rather not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they can smoke without me,&rdquo; said Billy, with sudden acrimony. &ldquo;I'll
+      see 'em to-morro'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; cried Mr. McLean. &ldquo;Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell them
+      to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself, tying
+      his scarf with great care. &ldquo;Wished I'd a clean shirt,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But I
+      don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good move.&rdquo; He
+      picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was particular to store
+      them in his safest pocket. &ldquo;I ain't sure whether you're crazy or not,&rdquo;
+       said he to the man in the looking-glass. &ldquo;I ain't never been sure.&rdquo; And he
+      slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+      tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+      or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+      breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+      Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+      pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+      the bill of fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to see you often,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'll come and see you if you don't
+      live too far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the trouble,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;I do. Awful far.&rdquo; He stared
+      out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+      write?&rdquo; &ldquo;What's that? Can I write? Oh yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney, Nebraska,
+      an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake&mdash;that's the finest town except
+      Denver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to, yet
+      goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable signs
+      of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+      interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+      they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+      the bill paid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+      stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from their
+      peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over the
+      city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+      buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+      presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells broke
+      out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you like music?&rdquo; inquired Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting, orderly
+      yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of Christmas
+      came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day, possessor of his
+      own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort of friendly
+      challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think we could go in here?&rdquo; Billy asked. A church door was
+      open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. &ldquo;They've good
+      music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been in
+      lots of times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+      to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+      unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep in
+      listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent imitation
+      of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain especially reached
+      their understandings, and when for the fourth time &ldquo;Shout the glad
+      tidings, exultingly sing,&rdquo; pealed forth and ceased, both the delighted
+      faces fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you wish there was more?&rdquo; Billy whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish there was a hundred verses,&rdquo; answered Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between them
+      they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin's eyes
+      roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their evergreen, the
+      flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold. &ldquo;'Peace, good-will
+      towards men,'&rdquo; he read. &ldquo;That's so. Peace and good-will. Yes, that's so. I
+      expect they got that somewheres in the Bible. It's awful good, and you'd
+      never think of it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. &ldquo;This is
+      the hymn we have now,&rdquo; she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+      took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the book
+      together, dutifully reading the words:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it, until
+      he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the concluding
+      ones:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+      second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned his
+      face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has reasons
+      which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but when the
+      service was over and he came out, he repeated again, &ldquo;'Peace and
+      good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if he'll
+      preach on them words I'll be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?&rdquo; asked Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses. Why,
+      we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among the
+      foothills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+      open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+      was walked off his young heels&mdash;a truth he learned complete in one
+      horrid moment, and battled to conceal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lame!&rdquo; he echoed, angrily. &ldquo;I ain't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said Lin, after the next ten steps. &ldquo;You are, and both feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden. &ldquo;I'm
+      played out myself,&rdquo; he said, sitting in the hotel and looking lugubriously
+      at Billy on a bed. &ldquo;And I ain't fit to have charge of a hog.&rdquo; He came and
+      put his hand on the boy's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sick,&rdquo; said the cripple. &ldquo;I tell you I'm bully. You wait an' see
+      me eat dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+      knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription and
+      most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of vigil,
+      while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed, better
+      and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't work quick to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I guess one day won't lose
+      me my trade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d' yu' mean?&rdquo; asked Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has theirs,
+      an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher an' lots,
+      an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for nothing. I
+      wished you lived in Denver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+      any of the outfit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I'm doing first-rate,&rdquo; said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+      which Mr. McLean now burst. &ldquo;An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+      at any other job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see that engine-man,&rdquo; muttered Lin. &ldquo;I don't like your smokin'
+      friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smart's nothin',&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot,&rdquo; pursued Billy, engagingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet he has!&rdquo; growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+      aback at his language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+      grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+      talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+      think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched and
+      shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through a scene
+      in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and forgiveness, and
+      intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The kid
+      would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him there, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+      corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular man,
+      with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that week
+      noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little boy
+      walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed as
+      happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a word,
+      and his face was serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+      horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. &ldquo;Have a good
+      drunk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed my mind,&rdquo; said Lin, grinning. &ldquo;Proves I've got one. Struck
+      Christmas all right, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's your friend?&rdquo; inquired his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+      to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at Sunk
+      Creek&mdash;why, I'll fix it somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+      plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sufferin Moses!&rdquo; remarked his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging
+      through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue
+      coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a little
+      island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two hours it
+      had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across the huge
+      dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating, imperceptible
+      miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for its slow pillar
+      of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's stainless sky.
+      Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other buildings stood out
+      plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks arranged and
+      forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the sameness of the
+      lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant rider, till,
+      suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've caved!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; I cried, thus awakened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the fool company,&rdquo; said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+      &ldquo;They've shed their haughtiness,&rdquo; he added, confidingly, as if I must know
+      all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did they learn that wisdom?&rdquo; I asked, not knowing in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Experience,&rdquo; he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+      passed); &ldquo;nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known more
+      of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I waked the
+      pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its haughtiness.
+      I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for so spun-out a
+      time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion of arrival had
+      evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed employment for my
+      otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the railroad company;
+      certainly something large had happened. Even as I dismounted at the
+      platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the station, and, at
+      once remarking, &ldquo;They're going to leave us alone,&rdquo; sprang on his horse and
+      galloped to the corrals down the line, where some cattle were being loaded
+      into a train. I went inside for my mail, and here were four more
+      cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had got a letter away from him,
+      and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate the jests of these
+      rollicking people. &ldquo;Read it!&rdquo; they said to me; and I did read the private
+      document, and learned that the railroad was going to waive its right to
+      enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ's good feeling.
+      &ldquo;Nothing more,&rdquo; the letter ran, &ldquo;will be done about the initial outrage or
+      the subsequent vandalisms. We shall pass over our wasted outlay in the
+      hope that a policy of friendship will prove our genuine desire to benefit
+      that section.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Initial outrage,'&rdquo; quoted one of the agent' large playmates. &ldquo;Ain't they
+      furgivin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+      deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+      cow-catcher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+      label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+      sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes,&rdquo; he drawled judicially, &ldquo;I'd be mad at that.
+      But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why, your
+      words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant.&rdquo; He took the
+      paper from me, and read, sardonically: &ldquo;'Subsequent vandalisms... wasted
+      outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the cattle. Saves
+      the poor things walking so far to the other railroad 'Policy of
+      friendship... genuine desire'&mdash;oh mouth-wash!&rdquo; And, shaking his bold,
+      clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of the agent.
+      &ldquo;Tubercle,&rdquo; said he (this was their name for the agent, who had told all
+      of us about his lungs), &ldquo;it ain't your fault we saw their fine letter.
+      They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't bother us any
+      more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late over this joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit the
+      vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to frankness,
+      and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its opposite affects
+      them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think of their late
+      sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box painted &ldquo;Hotel
+      Brunswick&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;hotel&rdquo; in small italics and &ldquo;Brunswick&rdquo; in enormous
+      capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+      and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+      challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the line
+      in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well known;
+      but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant young
+      cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by her to
+      see about supper and lodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+      beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+      myself. There were my saddle-blankets&mdash;rather wet; or Lin McLean
+      might ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the
+      corrals I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I
+      trusted and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several
+      empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these
+      freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by
+      three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking
+      through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But
+      with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until
+      five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door,
+      where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell
+      of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend
+      the remaining minutes in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was expecting you,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;Well, if I haven't frightened him!&rdquo;
+       She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; she
+      explained, &ldquo;I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side are you going
+      to butter your bread this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had smelt it?&rdquo; said I, still cloudy with surprise. &ldquo;Yes.
+      Unquestionably. Very rancid.&rdquo; She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+      fellowship in her tone, said, &ldquo;I was going to warn you&mdash;&rdquo; when
+      suddenly, down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. &ldquo;Oh,
+      dear!&rdquo; she cried, starting up. &ldquo;There's trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not trouble,&rdquo; I assured her. &ldquo;Too many are firing at once to be in
+      earnest. And you would be safe here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we are
+      respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah yondah.
+      Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home.&rdquo; The words
+      &ldquo;Louisville and Nashville&rdquo; spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unescorted all that way!&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it awful?&rdquo; said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing the
+      pistol she carried. &ldquo;But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+      suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?&rdquo; And she
+      eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why New York?&rdquo; I demanded. &ldquo;Guess again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she debated, &ldquo;well, cowboy clothes and city language&mdash;he's
+      English!&rdquo; she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+      to herself, reprovingly, &ldquo;If I'm not acting rude!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said I, rather familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so free
+      with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you&mdash;the hat and
+      everything&mdash;I took you&mdash;You see I've always been that used to
+      talking to&mdash;to folks around!&rdquo; Her bright face saddened, memories
+      evidently rose before her, and her eyes grew distant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wished to say, &ldquo;Treat me as 'folks around,'&rdquo; but this tall country girl
+      had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not &ldquo;folks around,&rdquo; she
+      had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+      there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+      comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+      dark as to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,&rdquo; she resumed, &ldquo;and never as far as
+      twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+      scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got me all wrong,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I'm not English; I'm not New York. I
+      am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+      line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you
+      say United States, you mean United Kentucky!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever!&rdquo; said she, staring at what was Greek to her&mdash;as it is
+      to most Americans. &ldquo;And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+      were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since&mdash;not
+      since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you,
+      you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd travel my money's length to meet her!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wave of pain crossed her face. &ldquo;Nate didn't know,&rdquo; she said then,
+      lightly. &ldquo;You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+      writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+      Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+      forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage,&rdquo; continued the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'll have your company on a weary road,&rdquo; said I; for my journey was
+      now to that part of the cattle country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Buffalo?&rdquo; she said, quickly. &ldquo;Then maybe you&mdash;maybe&mdash;My
+      brother is Nate Buckner.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;Then you're not acquainted with
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may have seen him,&rdquo; I answered, slowly. &ldquo;But faces and names out here
+      come and go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+      waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+      border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been sorry,
+      for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of the
+      sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and daring
+      skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart; but his
+      sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely years, and
+      to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell the
+      desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the stage
+      went soon after supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now isn't that a bother?&rdquo; said she, when I answered that it did not start
+      till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo;
+       she continued, briskly; &ldquo;I'm used to things. I'll just sit up somewhere.
+      Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure all that
+      shooting's only jollification?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certain,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I'll go and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They always will have their fun,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I hate to have a poor
+      boy get hurt&mdash;even him deserving it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They use pistols instead of fire-crackers,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;But you must never
+      sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you're real kind!&rdquo; she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+      wondering what I ought to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once&mdash;a
+      sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of
+      its name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail after
+      rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly during the
+      constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point these
+      unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp Separation
+      it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway man afford
+      time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless; and with
+      the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike result&mdash;Separ.
+      Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large almost as the
+      hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank and steam-pump,
+      and a section-house with three trees before it composed the north side.
+      South of the track were no trees. There was one long siding by the corrals
+      and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods
+      were for sale, a shed where you might get your horse shod, a wire fence
+      that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage
+      stable, and the little station&mdash;some seven shanties all told. Between
+      them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through
+      their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads
+      on a great string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string,
+      one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night.
+      Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of
+      sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the
+      continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed
+      many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande
+      similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds
+      hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous
+      young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot them
+      off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of the
+      agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin
+      with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to
+      telegraph for some additional cars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dead on to you!&rdquo; squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight of
+      them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought it was
+      a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the water-tank,
+      while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind the railing
+      that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some fifteen
+      strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to an
+      understanding, and the message was written and paid for and comfortably
+      despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame habits, sent for
+      the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise inappropriate air. He
+      had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious reader of our comic
+      weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the Virginian had reminded
+      him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money in the safe, he explained
+      to them, and this was a hard old country, wasn't it? and did they like
+      good whiskey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about
+      the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their round-up
+      grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode out, not
+      angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them should be so
+      tactless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we don't get him used to us,&rdquo; observed the Virginian, &ldquo;he and his
+      pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it. The
+      news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater, and
+      playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols
+      round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs improved, and he
+      came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand. But the
+      company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated,
+      which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of
+      authority began to invest Separ. Now what should authority do upon these
+      free plains, this wilderness of do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the
+      air was like inebriation? The large, headlong children who swept in from
+      the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm until
+      they found themselves resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the
+      cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they
+      had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his
+      death accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five
+      minutes. They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them
+      forever from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things
+      must be endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how
+      wrong the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon
+      Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for
+      example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would be
+      early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner. To
+      arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made
+      the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the
+      corrals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small, bold voice hailed me. &ldquo;Hello, you!&rdquo; it said; and here was Billy
+      Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick,
+      helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you were at school,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, school's quit,&rdquo; returned Billy, and changed the subject. &ldquo;Say, Lin's
+      hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with the
+      outfit.&rdquo; And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+      reminded him of politics. &ldquo;Wall Street,&rdquo; he was explaining to the agent,
+      &ldquo;has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+      along to Chicago. We want&mdash;&rdquo; Here he noticed me and, dragging his
+      gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean,&rdquo; simpered the agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin fixed his eye on the man. &ldquo;And you don't know it now,&rdquo; said he. Then
+      he removed his eye. &ldquo;Let's grub,&rdquo; he added to me. My friend did not walk
+      to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. &ldquo;Billy is
+      a good kid,&rdquo; he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds
+      in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter
+      dwelling with him, heavy and real. &ldquo;He's dead stuck on being a
+      cow-puncher,&rdquo; he presently said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't want to wait that long,&rdquo; Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+      &ldquo;And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+      The living will be scattered, and the dead&mdash;well, they'll be all
+      right. Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like
+      nets do the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more
+      cow-punchers,&rdquo; stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me
+      sad, though I know that progress cannot spare land and water for such
+      things. &ldquo;But Billy,&rdquo; Lin resumed, &ldquo;has agreed to school again when it
+      starts up in the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to.&rdquo;
+       Affection crept anew over the cow-puncher's face. &ldquo;He can learn books with
+      the quickest when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd
+      ought to have a regular mother till&mdash;till I can do for him, yu' know.
+      It's onwholesome him seeing and hearing the boys&mdash;and me, and me when
+      I forget!&mdash;but shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough
+      dropped and deserted. But when I found him the little calf could run and
+      notice like everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should hate your contract, Lin,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Adopting's a touch-and-go
+      business even when a man has a home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was mine.
+      I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got him.
+      He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and then, but Lord!
+      his badness is all right&mdash;not sneaky. I'll take him hunting next
+      month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school.
+      Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man foreman&mdash;and
+      he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's asking one hard enough,&rdquo; said I, digressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting&mdash;&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, and his
+      wide-open, hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly
+      looking at me again, he said: &ldquo;Don't you get off any more truck about
+      eldest son and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now&mdash;not
+      that I care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe
+      he'd not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set on&mdash;well&mdash;he
+      didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and I'm going to
+      make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him, if I can. Now
+      you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?&rdquo; His forehead was moist over getting the
+      thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed shortly. &ldquo;She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+      you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here&rdquo; (Lin
+      laid his hand on my shoulder), &ldquo;if you can't expect a good time for
+      yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason, can't
+      yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his hand
+      off my shoulder); &ldquo;I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met last. I
+      guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself&mdash;Why,
+      there's a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That there is!&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;And certainly the world owes her a better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a fine-looker,&rdquo; interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+      attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+      Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered &ldquo;Supper!&rdquo; with a
+      shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;let's hurry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+      at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+      sister's devoted journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nate Buckner!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Him with a decent sister!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the other way round,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Her with him for a brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He goes to the penitentiary this week,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;He had no more cash to
+      stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his sister
+      could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved time and
+      money. How did she act when yu' told her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've not told her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+      better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her&mdash;no, sir; it's not
+      right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+      would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+      against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+      gently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death's different,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a shaved
+      head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd been just
+      shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk for
+      thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick as the stage
+      pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be down ahead of
+      the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd around
+      staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that. If you don't
+      feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself.&rdquo; And Mr. McLean took
+      the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+      chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+      that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at
+      a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered
+      away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted
+      no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and
+      many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking at
+      her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and
+      went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed
+      the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the
+      invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a
+      disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have
+      never been quite sure what&mdash;perhaps reversion to the native animal
+      absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest
+      he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork.
+      Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped
+      his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that, eyed
+      him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength of the
+      butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate, the
+      table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's eye, now relieved the general
+      silence by observing, chattily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's too rich for you,&rdquo; croaked the enraged proprietor, &ldquo;use
+      axle-dope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve the
+      decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+      sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+      boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin, to
+      me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying, in
+      his Texas idiom,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have butter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on &ldquo;butter&rdquo; cracked an
+      octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+      shake her head at the plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. &ldquo;She wouldn't choose for
+      none,&rdquo; he said to the youth, with appalling calm. &ldquo;Thank yu' most to
+      death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess,&rdquo; fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, &ldquo;it would go slicker
+      rubbed outside than swallered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to know anything,&rdquo; observed Mr. McLean. &ldquo;What toy-shop did
+      you escape from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wind him up! Wind him up!&rdquo; said the proprietor, sticking his head in from
+      the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?&rdquo; screamed the boy, furiously.
+      &ldquo;Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!&rdquo; And
+      he flounced out with his young boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's hiring him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The C. Y. outfit,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-circle L.,&rdquo; a third corrected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seen one like him onced,&rdquo; said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+      his chair. &ldquo;Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!&rdquo;
+       And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also silently
+      dispersed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+      talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+      smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+      himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+      corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+      the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+      ceremony, when she began at once, &ldquo;You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+      have my laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, m'm,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;don't mention it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that boy, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, please don't! Why&mdash;why&mdash;you were every bit as bad!&rdquo; Miss
+      Buckner pealed out, joyously. &ldquo;It was the two of you. Oh dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. &ldquo;I had no&mdash;I didn't go to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well, and&mdash;I
+      know I ought to behave better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, yu' oughtn't!&rdquo; said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+      deprecation, &ldquo;You'll think us plumb ignorant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know enough to be kind to folks,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd like to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the only thing makes the world go round!&rdquo; she declared, with an
+      emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she caught
+      herself up, and said gayly to me, &ldquo;And where's that house you were going
+      to build for a lone girl to sleep in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am no&mdash;tenderfoot, don't you call them?&rdquo; She whipped out her
+      pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+      glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+      behind it. &ldquo;My!&rdquo; he said, at length, almost in a whisper, &ldquo;she's got the
+      drop on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours,&rdquo; said Miss Buckner.
+      &ldquo;But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards.&rdquo; And she
+      handed it to him for inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. &ldquo;My!&rdquo; he
+      murmured again. &ldquo;Why, shucks!&rdquo; He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+      rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+      unconscious thumb. &ldquo;You hold it just as steady as I could,&rdquo; he said with
+      pride, and added, insinuatingly, &ldquo;I could learn yu' the professional drop
+      in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd not trade, though,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;for all your flattery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will yu' trade?&rdquo; pounced Lin. &ldquo;Won't yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like me
+      ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows the brands, too!&rdquo; cried Lin, in ecstasy. &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, &ldquo;we're losing time
+      right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+      lady, and I'll bring her along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the office.
+      The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held the ticket
+      and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and room for
+      the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the sitting,
+      dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove in a
+      pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the
+      company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his
+      room to rights. But we need not have hurried ourselves. Mr. McLean was so
+      long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and
+      talking with her, while fifty yards away skulked poor Texas, alone. This
+      boy's name was, like himself, of the somewhat unexpected order, being
+      Manassas Donohoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and on
+      seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, &ldquo;Did he know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did know!&rdquo; she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+      continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, &ldquo;I reckon you don't like
+      to have to tell folks bad news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was I that now hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to a strange girl, anyway!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Well, now I have good news to
+      tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you knew
+      about poor Nate, for that's the reason&mdash;Of course those things can't
+      be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about this
+      world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left home five
+      years ago. And I am twenty-three&mdash;old enough to be Nate's
+      grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize bad
+      companions when they came around. See that!&rdquo; She showed me a paper, taking
+      it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a pardon signed
+      by Governor Barker. &ldquo;And the Governor has let me carry it to Nate myself.
+      He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The Governor was real
+      kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must have a mustache by
+      now?&rdquo; said she to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, &ldquo;he has got a
+      mustache all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll be glad to see you,&rdquo; said I, for something to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?&rdquo; she asked Lin,
+      turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It was
+      plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I was
+      already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse to tell
+      her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that &ldquo;we&rdquo; had
+      before us, and that lay between her and Nate. &ldquo;We would be four&mdash;herself,
+      Lin, myself, and the boy Billy.&rdquo; Was Billy the one at supper? Oh no; just
+      Billy Lusk, of Laramie. &ldquo;He's a kid I'm taking up the country,&rdquo; Lin
+      explained. &ldquo;Ain't you most tuckered out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, me!&rdquo; she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing Lin
+      should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep in the
+      agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back into the
+      outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness she had
+      shown me before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out!&rdquo; she cried, laughing. &ldquo;Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+      you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you ever
+      so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was&mdash;a
+      cowboy!&rdquo; And she glanced at Lin. &ldquo;They're calling forty-seven,&rdquo; she added
+      to the agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's me,&rdquo; he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. &ldquo;So you're
+      one of us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;How in the world do you
+      know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+      right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them from
+      his room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?&rdquo; inquired the proud and smiling
+      McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+      coming through on a special engine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't say it out loud!&rdquo; quavered the agent, as the machine clicked
+      its news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' needn't be scared of a girl,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Another sheriff! So they're
+      not quit bothering us yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a sheriff
+      sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas, said to be at
+      the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations beyond, and the
+      engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here was no molesting of
+      Separ's liberties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+      corrals, &ldquo;the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+      may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here,&rdquo; he urged to the
+      girl. But she would not. &ldquo;Well, then, we must rustle some other private
+      place for you. How's the section-house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rank,&rdquo; said the agent, &ldquo;since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+      has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An empty?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Is there a clean one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've sure never done that?&rdquo; Lin burst out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're scandalized,&rdquo; said she, punishing him instantly. &ldquo;I reckon it
+      does take a decent girl to shock you.&rdquo; And while she stood laughing at him
+      with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no offence.
+      &ldquo;Why, to be sure you didn't!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I do enjoy you real
+      thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, m'm,&rdquo; protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to addressing
+      her as &ldquo;ma'am,&rdquo; &ldquo;we ain't used&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+      never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+      never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+      lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+      things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant no
+      offense,&rdquo; she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+      protector, &ldquo;because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+      about an empty. That will be rich&mdash;if I can have the door shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+      with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+       while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+      our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+      the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+      back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: &ldquo;Her name's Jessamine. She told
+      me. Don't yu' like that name?&rdquo; So I answered him, &ldquo;Yes, very much,&rdquo;
+       thinking that some larger flower&mdash;but still a flower&mdash;might have
+      been more apt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody seems to have slept in these,&rdquo; said she, stepping down; and on
+      learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+      &ldquo;What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if you
+      had a Louavull an' Nashvull car,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Twould seem like my old
+      Kentucky home!&rdquo; And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held the lamp
+      up to read the car's lettering. &ldquo;'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's a way-off
+      stranger! I reckon they're all strange.&rdquo; She went along the train with her
+      lamp. &ldquo;Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is rich! Nate will
+      laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's a little nearer my
+      country. What time does the stage start? Porter, please wake 'C., B. and
+      Q.' at six, sharp,&rdquo; said she to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings&mdash;their
+      doings&mdash;with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can
+      ever happen again, I know; for it's all gone&mdash;settled, sobered, and
+      gone. And whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup, how
+      I thank my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in time
+      for!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a good
+      shake-down&mdash;clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+      would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+      not resist&mdash;what do you suppose?&mdash;a looking-glass for next
+      morning! And we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to
+      her, she said, in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by
+      all means, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety
+      better so; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began
+      spreading straw and blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and
+      long, and its tone rose in pitch as it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get him to run right to the corrals,&rdquo; said the agent, &ldquo;so the
+      sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll convince 'em he is,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Stop him here, or let him go
+      through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails of the
+      main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the headlight grew
+      down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at the corrals
+      chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the coming engine
+      heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met and mixed with
+      the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached together like a
+      sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars, where I heard Lin
+      ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could see the agent running
+      about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal with as much coherence as a
+      chicken with its head off. I had very short space for wonder or alarm. The
+      edge of one of my freight-cars glowed suddenly with the imminent
+      headlight, and galloping shots invaded the place. The horsemen flew by,
+      overreaching, and leaning back and lugging against their impetus. They
+      passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust coiled up thick from the dark
+      ground and luminously unfolded across the glare of the sharp-halted
+      locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered around it where it stood by
+      our cars, its air-brake pumping deep breaths, and the internal steam
+      humming through its bowels; and I came out in time to see Billy Lusk climb
+      its front with callow, enterprising shouts. That was child's play; and the
+      universal yell now raised by the horsemen was their child's play too; but
+      the whole thing could so precipitately reel into the fatal that my
+      thoughts stopped. I could only look when I saw that they had somehow
+      recognized the man on the engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their
+      horses and were making boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean,
+      neither boisterous nor joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his
+      pistol drawn, to keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on
+      the lever, the fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and
+      descended and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a
+      good-natured eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his
+      errand, when some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to
+      get down and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he
+      named the sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and
+      the new yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations,
+      they swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
+      step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in this
+      silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and they all
+      looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there on the
+      threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind her, and
+      touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine Buckner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you gentlemen do me a favor?&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Strangers, maybe, have no
+      right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For I'm
+      real sleepy!&rdquo; She smiled as she brought this out. &ldquo;I've been four days and
+      nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo. You see
+      I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want boys to be
+      boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till to-morrow
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among them,
+      and that some word was passing through their groups. After the brief
+      interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their horses, while
+      the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the sheriff and
+      engineer remained as they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, lady,&rdquo; said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the others
+      kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed away to the
+      corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern chaps, passed
+      from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light in front of the
+      locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and there a faint,
+      vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing column a bold,
+      half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the doorway, and then
+      was gone again into the dimness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+      she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine moved,
+      off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an exclamation of
+      horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and, with all a parent's
+      fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely as the sheriff
+      steamed by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't a-going to chase it,&rdquo; said young Billy, struggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a mind to cowhide you,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Buckner interposed. &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;next time; if he does
+      it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that way again
+      if he lets you off?&rdquo; she asked Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Billy, looking at her with interest. &ldquo;Father 'd have cowhided
+      me anyway, I guess,&rdquo; he added, meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call him father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, father's at Laramie,&rdquo; said Billy, with disgust. &ldquo;He'd not stop for
+      your asking. Lin don't bother me much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You quit talking and step up there!&rdquo; ordered his guardian. &ldquo;Well, m'm, I
+      guess yu' can sleep good now in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+      Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride
+      together. Pleasant dreams!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+      it, remarking: &ldquo;I like her. What makes her live in a car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who took
+      him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One distant
+      whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left our car
+      open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off, when I
+      grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his stockings
+      and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then leaped down,
+      light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in expectancy; but
+      back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid into bed I asked
+      what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the
+      girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping a watch on it. &ldquo;So I gave
+      him to understand,&rdquo; said Lin, &ldquo;that I had no objection to him amusing
+      himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed I was enough guard, and he
+      would find sleep healthier for his system.&rdquo; After this I went to sleep
+      wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought I heard some one outside,
+      and learned in the morning from Lin that the boy had not gone until the
+      time came for him to join his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised
+      that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the
+      idea of this unknown, unthanked young sentinel. &ldquo;Sleeping's a heap better
+      for them kind till they get their growth,&rdquo; was his single observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I
+      told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note that
+      young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see him upon
+      her return, to thank him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any Jack can walk around all night,&rdquo; said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,&rdquo; observed the young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when
+      she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+      untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at
+      the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours
+      very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside her
+      to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+      further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so
+      winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+      overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+      doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not
+      prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+      Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and
+      woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and
+      counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to
+      herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at
+      me and my well-assumed slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+      sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know this road,&rdquo; piped Billy, on the box
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a
+      left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know. What
+      made Lin marry mother when father was around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+      instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld that
+      his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met her on
+      Bear Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The formidable nine-year-old pondered. &ldquo;The geography says they used to
+      have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can
+      have a lot of husbands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It don't especially depend on the place,&rdquo; remarked the driver to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; Billy went on, &ldquo;Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd had
+      a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I
+      blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss
+      Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and
+      Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and
+      I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert!
+      Say, am I Lin's, honest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy, you're not,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+      I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go. You
+      ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are, but
+      I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother take
+      'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever does. I
+      guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he does,&rdquo; said
+      Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, &ldquo;I'll quit him and skip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No danger, Bill,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would the nice lady inside please you?&rdquo; inquired the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!&rdquo; sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+      &ldquo;She's after her brother. She's all right, though,&rdquo; he added, approvingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+      manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now spoke
+      cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+      That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as
+      to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war!
+      How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to
+      Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his
+      mother's life! &ldquo;Though,&rdquo; said the driver, an easygoing cynic, &ldquo;folks with
+      lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!&rdquo; But
+      presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully
+      lifted him down and up. &ldquo;I've knowed that woman, too,&rdquo; he whispered to me.
+      &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she fooled
+      Lin into marryin' her. Come to think,&rdquo; he mused, as twilight deepened
+      around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between us,
+      &ldquo;there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't make
+      soberness for somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+      quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our
+      next change of horses &ldquo;hoped&rdquo; I would come inside, I knew she did not hope
+      very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+      brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her eyes.
+      The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks white and
+      her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me that we
+      should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold. I think she
+      was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart understood the
+      lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow puncher, standing
+      aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully and spoke never a word.
+      For a moment he looked after her with sombre emotion; but the court-house
+      and prison stood near and in sight, and, as plain as if he had said so, I
+      saw him suddenly feel she should not be stared at going up those steps; it
+      must be all alone, the pain and the joy of that reprieve! He turned away
+      with me, and after a few silent steps said, &ldquo;Wasted! all wasted!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not a fool,&rdquo; he broke in, roughly. &ldquo;You don't hope anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll start life elsewhere,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+      Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+      tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+      how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+      her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it into
+      money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have just bit
+      my head off, and&mdash;and that would sure hurt me now!&rdquo; Lin brought up
+      with a comical chuckle. &ldquo;And she went to work, and he cleared out, and no
+      more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given up
+      tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+      long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows he's
+      not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts for
+      him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York, till she got
+      in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had to go as far as
+      Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the money he stole.&rdquo; We
+      had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone into the quick little
+      river. &ldquo;She's awful strict in some ways. Thought Buffalo must be a wicked
+      place because of the shops bein' open Sunday. Now if that was all
+      Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is mostly sin. But her heart
+      is a shield for Nate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her face is as beautiful as her actions,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He whirled round and took both my shoulders. &ldquo;Come walking!&rdquo; he urged. &ldquo;I
+      must talk some.&rdquo; So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+      mountains. &ldquo;I came awful near asking her in the stage,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time can't increase my feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+      with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can be
+      so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard. And
+      everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending to speak
+      of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my
+      fencing and my ditch&mdash;and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better
+      than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I'd like to ask&mdash;&rdquo; I cried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask away!&rdquo; he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you&mdash;&rdquo; but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of
+      course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his
+      substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not
+      married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped,
+      for to trench here was not for me or any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, &ldquo;don't you ask about
+      the things you're meaning.&rdquo; Then his face grew radiant and rather stern.
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones
+      can't ever be bygones? But if you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;never come to look away up
+      to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you did
+      deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+      blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+      vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+      since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is not
+      true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all plants
+      need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen misery
+      deaden once kind people to everything but self&mdash;almost the saddest
+      sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of
+      happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been
+      needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have been much
+      too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and this care of
+      young Billy with which he had loaded himself. &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I will drink
+      your health and luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm healthy enough,&rdquo; said he; and we came back to the main street and
+      into the main saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d'ye, boys?&rdquo; said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. &ldquo;It's on me
+      to-day,&rdquo; he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was a
+      little drunk. &ldquo;I'm setting 'em up,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Why? Why, because&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      looked around for appreciation&mdash;&ldquo;because it's not every son-of-a-gun
+      in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important, I want you to
+      understand,&rdquo; he pursued to the cold bystanders. &ldquo;They'll have a picture of
+      me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They can't
+      do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a
+      colt,&rdquo; he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink&mdash;and
+      then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in
+      his mind. &ldquo;You're not drinking, Lin,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said McLean, &ldquo;I'm not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' never gave water the chance,&rdquo; retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+      the place without my having drunk his health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+      with the jail door scarce closed behind him. &ldquo;Folks are not going to like
+      that,&rdquo; said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel. Yet
+      the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+      company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+      told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+      get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+      for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle their
+      young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs.
+      Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working. All this
+      she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first
+      day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin
+      offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at
+      retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made
+      excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, shaven clean,
+      with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner to Jessamine
+      were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean, so that I
+      observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no jealousy!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But he comes in and kisses her, and he kisses
+      her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such oncontrollable
+      affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I expect she must
+      have some of her savings left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+      our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+      her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+      Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her; and
+      he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that dead
+      place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed some
+      regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to visit her
+      now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he spoke volubly of
+      himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of brother and sister
+      had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held himself and Billy
+      aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then merely to give me the
+      news that people here wanted no more of Nate Buckner; he would be run out
+      of the country, and respect for the sister was all that meanwhile saved
+      him. But Buckner, like so many spared criminals, seemed brazenly unaware
+      he was disgraced, and went hailing loudly any riders or drivers we met,
+      while beside him his sister sat close and straight, her stanch affection
+      and support for the world to see. For all she let appear, she might have
+      been bringing him back from some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode
+      along the travesty seemed more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and
+      darker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun draws
+      down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream comes
+      flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along the
+      margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that we saw
+      Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of light.
+      The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern masonry
+      of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and amber and
+      saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about the levels, and
+      horses were moving among the restless colts. These the brother bade his
+      sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I heard him boasting of
+      his skill&mdash;truthful boasting, to be sure. Had he been honest in his
+      dealings, the good-will that man's courage and dashing appearance beget in
+      men would have brought him more employment than he could have undertaken.
+      He told Jessamine his way of breaking a horse that few would dare, and she
+      listened eagerly. &ldquo;Do you remember when I used to hold the pony for you to
+      get on?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You always would scare me, Nate!&rdquo; And he replied,
+      fluently, Yes, yes; did she see that horse there, near the fence? He was a
+      four-year-old, an outlaw, and she would find no one had tried getting on
+      his back since he had been absent. This was the first question he asked on
+      reaching the cabin, where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider;
+      and, finding he was right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't know how to handle that horse,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I told you so. Give
+      me a rope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only was
+      their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+      riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+      cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+      been in the Buffalo saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trick is easy enough,&rdquo; said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+      liking an audience. &ldquo;You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+      this&mdash;Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+      sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the
+      mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their
+      fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+      trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+      knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+      bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the
+      rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve,
+      rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on
+      without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we
+      cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something
+      awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise to silence. The
+      horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden towards us, a
+      wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until the head sank on
+      the horse's rump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed and
+      went, leaning on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+      having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse had crushed
+      him internally. He must have become almost instantly unconscious, being
+      held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair cinch; it
+      may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world that he knew.
+      The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him home, which his
+      sister at first wished to do. &ldquo;Why, I came here to bring him home,&rdquo; she
+      said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax. Her calm, the
+      unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was surrounded
+      with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she saw her calamity
+      clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was Lin gave her what
+      she needed&mdash;the repose of his strong, silent presence. He spoke no
+      sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the burial;
+      he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said to her,
+      and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some mechanism of
+      the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell her story as she
+      would. Once I heard him say to her, with the same authority of that first
+      &ldquo;come away&rdquo;; &ldquo;Now you've had enough of the talking. Come for a walk.&rdquo;
+       Enough of the talking&mdash;as if it were a treatment! How did he think of
+      that? Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed him, and I saw the two going
+      quietly about in the meadows and along the curving brook; and that night
+      she slept well. On one only point did the cow-puncher consult me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But she
+      has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where
+      she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at him
+      to-day, for&mdash;well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.
+      But I'd like to show you my idea before going further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+      sight of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all I wanted to know,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'll fix the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far as
+      Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to hour,
+      and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and sheltering
+      trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate laid, and there
+      she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those walks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+      with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+      On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he
+      inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in
+      Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt
+      myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so. My advice to
+      him would have been ill received, and&mdash;as was soon to be made plain&mdash;would
+      have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning he and Billy were
+      gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs.
+      Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where
+      we had come for part of a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year&mdash;painful,
+      serious events&mdash;like an interview with some important person with
+      whom your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing,
+      it froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+      diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+      choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Wensday four a. m.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+      bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You will
+      confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner of
+      date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss J. Buckner
+      may prefer company for the trip being long and poor accommodations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           &ldquo;Yours &amp;c.     L. McLEAN.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound) that
+      this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give herself to a
+      lover was distasteful to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and she
+      was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank surprise
+      at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from her lips,
+      at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as to her
+      opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us talk straight,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Do you mean that Miss Buckner says that,
+      or that you say it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the poor thing says nothing!&rdquo; exclaimed the lady. &ldquo;It's like a man
+      to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all just
+      the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to know
+      what I think of him next time we meet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy in
+      the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we did
+      not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle or
+      cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her loneliness
+      had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable roof,
+      the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in the hill
+      by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung to the
+      neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when I told
+      her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked to the
+      court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one life-memory
+      farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the receding town and
+      mountains. &ldquo;It's awful to be leaving him!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Excuse me for acting
+      so in front of you.&rdquo; With the poignant emptiness overcoming her in new
+      guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in Illinois until he had been
+      sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he must have gone with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+      come to him? But I said: &ldquo;You know you don't think it was your fault. You
+      know you would do the same again.&rdquo; She listened to me, but her eyes had no
+      interest in them. &ldquo;He never knew pain,&rdquo; I pursued, &ldquo;and he died doing the
+      thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying himself, and
+      you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk religion, but I
+      can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you for
+      saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want it&mdash;to
+      hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+      was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the wounds of
+      grief would heal and leave no sickness&mdash;perhaps no higher
+      sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+      held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+      notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+      called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers. Now
+      and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that was in
+      her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements brought us
+      to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when at last
+      Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at the
+      suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped out of
+      the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed and
+      beamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I went away without telling you goodbye!&rdquo; he began, not wisely. &ldquo;Mrs.
+      Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. &ldquo;Indeed? There was no special
+      obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lin, crestfallen. &ldquo;Yu' sure don't mean that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. &ldquo;No, neighbor, I don't mean
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neighbor!&rdquo; he exclaimed; and again, &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; much pleased. &ldquo;Now it
+      would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blamed if I understand her,&rdquo; cried Lin. &ldquo;Blamed if I do. But you're going
+      to understand me sure quick!&rdquo; He rushed inside the station, spoke sharply
+      to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that had pushed
+      him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed near bursting.
+      &ldquo;I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter, and I expect I
+      know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here.&rdquo; He took it from the less
+      hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. &ldquo;You needn't to fear.
+      Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!&rdquo; He watched it in her
+      hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a Christmas parcel he
+      wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully untie. &ldquo;Open it,&rdquo; he
+      urged again. &ldquo;Keeping me waiting this way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world does all this mean?&rdquo; cried Jessamine, stopping short at
+      the first sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read,&rdquo; said Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've done this!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read, read!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+      written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss Buckner
+      might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she was willing
+      to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her way east, and
+      talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more than she had
+      been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she could continue
+      east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent believed the salary
+      could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to find an order for a
+      free ride to Edgeford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. &ldquo;You did do this,&rdquo; she
+      repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And I am plumb proud of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+      stopped. &ldquo;Did anybody ever!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no! oh no!&rdquo; Jessamine declared. &ldquo;Though how am I ever to thank you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By not argufying,&rdquo; Lin answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+      are crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been waiting to hear yu' say that,&rdquo; said the complacent McLean. &ldquo;I'm
+      not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an hour, and
+      I expect you'll be wanting to go on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I expect I'll go, too,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be plumb proud to have yu',&rdquo; the cow-puncher assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now,&rdquo; said Jessamine, again
+      laughing, sunny and defiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet you are!&rdquo; said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into the
+      station serenely. &ldquo;You can't get used to new ideas in a minute,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to me. &ldquo;I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,&rdquo; he
+      broke out, impetuously, &ldquo;I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When she
+      goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll you do
+      then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just knew I'd have
+      to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble inconvenient&mdash;Billy
+      here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'&mdash;but how could I let
+      her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some Blue-grass son-of-a-gun
+      back there? And I hated the fix I was in till that morning, getting up, I
+      was joshin' the Virginia man that's after Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no
+      educated lady would think of a man who talked with an African accent.
+      'It's repotted you have a Southern rival yourself,' says he, joshin' back.
+      So I said I guessed the rival would find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he.
+      'Any man with his voice broke in two halves, and one down in his stomach
+      and one up among the angels, is goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a
+      heap about his lady vigilante in the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said;
+      and I must have jumped, for they all asked where the lightning had struck.
+      And in fifteen minutes after writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh,
+      I figured things out on that ride!&rdquo; (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the
+      back.) &ldquo;Got to Separ. Got the sheriff's address&mdash;the sheriff that saw
+      her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford
+      and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said,
+      'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your
+      water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the
+      superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he
+      flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to
+      rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to
+      be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between
+      Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from
+      Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a
+      man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman
+      would be respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct
+      the business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began
+      to soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as
+      wise as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you deserve success after thinking of a thing like that!
+      You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago. By
+      eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, so she will!&rdquo; said Lin, affecting surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+      parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination of
+      check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly failed
+      to gratify her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+      dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+      something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+      supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, &ldquo;I hope I shall see
+      Mr. Donohoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Texas?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+      the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can walk round a freight-car all night,&rdquo; said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+      &ldquo;I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!&rdquo; cried out Jessamine
+      &ldquo;Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean, you
+      surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; began Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her laughter routed him. &ldquo;Maybe you didn't notice you were young,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe even
+      the girls kind o' did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's hard to beat, ain't she?&rdquo; inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him
+      waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye.
+      The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it
+      was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not
+      good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's
+      arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made herself bright
+      again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you ride any more cow-catchers,&rdquo; she warned Billy Lusk, &ldquo;or I'll
+      have to come back and look after you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't,&rdquo; shouted the
+      long-memoried nine-year-old. &ldquo;You will,&rdquo; murmured Mr. McLean, oracularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner cried
+      &ldquo;Jump!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; said he, placidly. Then he called to me, &ldquo;I'm hard to beat,
+      too!&rdquo; So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+      intention all along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that marriage again?&rdquo; said Billy, anxiously. &ldquo;He wouldn't tell me
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford,&rdquo; said the agent. &ldquo;Be
+      back to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along,&rdquo; Billy complained. And
+      Separ laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+      remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+      made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+      bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep was
+      unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town. Separ
+      lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a while. But
+      news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be sifted through
+      the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+      the Eastern States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+      to us,&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't tell him good-bye,&rdquo; said Honey Wiggin. &ldquo;Separ'll be slow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can give his successor a right hearty welcome,&rdquo; the Virginian
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's you!&rdquo; said Honey. &ldquo;Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're the
+      leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+      faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; drawled the Southerner, &ldquo;that's what I'm aiming to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+      welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean. He
+      reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+      casual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring your new wife?&rdquo; they inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; she preferred Kentucky,&rdquo; Lin said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring the old one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; she preferred Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl,&rdquo; said the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said Mr. McLean. &ldquo;I quit at Edgeford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+      being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle had
+      gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from its
+      lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, &ldquo;You'll see her
+      to-morrow if you go in with the outfit.&rdquo; Then, looking round to make sure
+      we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket, cherishingly, a
+      little shining pistol. &ldquo;Hers,&rdquo; said he, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've exchanged,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night when
+      Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My idea,&rdquo; he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. &ldquo;See this,
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked, and there was the word &ldquo;Neighbor&rdquo; engraved on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her idea,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good one!&rdquo; I murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+      the superintendent's proposition.&rdquo; Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+      weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. &ldquo;She can beat that with mine!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed, proud and tender. &ldquo;She took four days deciding at Edgeford, and
+      I learned her to hit the ace of clubs.&rdquo; He showed me the cards they had
+      practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in a book
+      as if they were pressed flowers. &ldquo;They won't get crumpled that way,&rdquo; said
+      he; and he further showed me a tintype. &ldquo;She's got the other at Separ,&rdquo; he
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+      deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+      again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+      work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+      Kentucky. &ldquo;But how in the world,&rdquo; I asked him, &ldquo;did you persuade her to
+      stop over at Edgeford at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' mustn't forget,&rdquo; said the lover (and he blushed), &ldquo;that I had her
+      four hours alone on the train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+      day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+      so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+      He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was a
+      joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+      Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on. He
+      suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change at
+      Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We mostly take their tricks,&rdquo; observed the Virginian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, &ldquo;that's so, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+      of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of legend&mdash;more
+      egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and no serious horde
+      would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and copious howling
+      brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like rabbits&mdash;all
+      save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in there, and the
+      horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and leaped to earth&mdash;except
+      Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door stood open wide to any cool
+      breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped in foremost, hat lowering
+      over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped rooted, staring, and his mouth
+      came open slowly; his hand went feeling up for his hat, and came down with
+      it by degrees as by degrees his grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he
+      said: &ldquo;Why, excuse me, ma'am! Good-morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+      open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+      welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+      Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place, and the
+      great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging water-tank
+      shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+      itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+      removed its foolish hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+      railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have any letters, ma'am,&rdquo; said the Virginian, more inventive,
+      &ldquo;I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's.&rdquo; He knew the judge's office
+      was seventy miles from here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any for the C. Y.?&rdquo; muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+      mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+      some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+      letters ever came for these names!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no letter for any one present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, truly,&rdquo; said Jessamine behind the railing. &ldquo;For you seemed
+      real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+      please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand things
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank yu', m'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she don't understand things yet,&rdquo; soliloquized the Virginian. &ldquo;Oh
+      dear, no.&rdquo; He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. &ldquo;You Lin McLean,&rdquo; said
+      he, in his gentle voice, &ldquo;you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+      mawnin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+      small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and
+      vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and
+      here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+      of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+      observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean &ldquo;'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+      for a six-shooter as ever I heard,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But she'll never have need
+      of your gun in Separ&mdash;only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while
+      she hearkens to your courtin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. &ldquo;Plumb strange,&rdquo; he
+      said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, &ldquo;how a man will
+      win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair seems black as ever,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hopes ain't so glossy any more,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Lin has done better
+      this second trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Lusk don't count,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+      clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky.&rdquo; And the Virginian
+      fell silent again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+      that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+      idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a good
+      shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+      possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They would
+      have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+      water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one or
+      another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters, and
+      brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin, more
+      original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an ace of
+      clubs. &ldquo;I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a shootin'-match,&rdquo; he
+      would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more objectionable shooting than
+      this. Texas brought her presents of game&mdash;antelope, sage-chickens&mdash;but,
+      shyness intervening, he left them outside the door, and entering, dressed
+      in all the &ldquo;Sunday&rdquo; that he had, would sit dumbly in the lady's presence.
+      I remember his emerging from one of these placid interviews straight into
+      the hands of his tormentors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she don't notice your clothes, Texas,&rdquo; said the Virginian, &ldquo;just
+      mention them to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now yer've done offended her,&rdquo; shrilled Manassas Donohoe. &ldquo;She heard
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll hear you singin' sooprano,&rdquo; said Honey Wiggin. &ldquo;It's good this
+      country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+      corrupt your morals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man,&rdquo; observed the
+      Virginian. &ldquo;Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+      found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no one.
+      Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he had gone
+      on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But more than
+      this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye to Jessamine
+      Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a wolverene-skin, a
+      hunting trophy. &ldquo;She can have it,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;I like her.&rdquo; Then he stole
+      a look at his guardian. &ldquo;If they get married and send me back to mother,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;I'll run away sure.&rdquo; So school and this old dread haunted the
+      child, while for the man, Lin the lucky, who suspected nothing of it, time
+      was ever bringing love nearer to his hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box
+      Elder, and even said she wanted chickens there; since when Mr. McLean
+      might occasionally have been seen at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard
+      fowls, feeding and cursing them with equal care. Spring would see him
+      married, he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time right!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;And I want her to know Billy some more
+      before he goes to Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Bear Creek!&rdquo; said Billy, acidly. &ldquo;Why can't I stay home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home sounds kind o' slick,&rdquo; said Lin to me. &ldquo;Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+      closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral, and
+      ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're good,
+      maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her about
+      Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+      angrily to the corral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin nudged me, laughing. &ldquo;I can rile him every time about Laramie,&rdquo; said
+      he, affectionately. &ldquo;I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store by
+      me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What do
+      yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all&mdash;right
+      after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy&mdash;Jessamine says
+      to me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about
+      her brother and her sorrow.&rdquo; Lin paused. &ldquo;And about me. I can't never tell
+      you&mdash;but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+      picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+      his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all that;
+      and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't anything
+      to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was your son and I
+      was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever gave me I
+      didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: &ldquo;I didn't
+      ask her about Laramie. So there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, kid,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, patting his head, &ldquo;yu' needn't
+      to, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to
+      the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we went
+      over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots, a
+      rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+      dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently on
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scanty room for company!&rdquo; Jessamine said. &ldquo;But we must make out this way&mdash;till
+      we have another way.&rdquo; She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face darkened. &ldquo;Do
+      you know,&rdquo; she pursued to me, &ldquo;with all those chickens Mr. McLean tells me
+      about, never a one has he thought to bring here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Livin' or dead do you want 'em?&rdquo; inquired Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!&rdquo; And we all laughed
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?&rdquo; spoke Billy, suddenly,
+      from his stool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to see anybody try to make you?&rdquo; exclaimed Jessamine. &ldquo;Who says
+      any such thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin did,&rdquo; said Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. &ldquo;What a way to tease him!&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought,&rdquo; said Lin the boisterous. &ldquo;I wouldn't have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come sit here, Billy,&rdquo; said Jessamine. &ldquo;Whenever he teases, you tell me,
+      and we'll make him behave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest?&rdquo; persisted Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shake hands on it,&rdquo; said Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+      you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest! Honest!&rdquo; And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either,&rdquo; stated Billy,
+      relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's simple,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right,&rdquo; repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+      looking down. &ldquo;Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy?&rdquo; whispered Jessamine. &ldquo;Then you&mdash;But his name is Lusk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course it is,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Father and mother are living in Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all straight,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;I never saw her till three
+      years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only&mdash;only&mdash;only it don't
+      come easy to tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose. &ldquo;Miss Buckner,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;he will tell you. But he will not tell
+      you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret. It
+      is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on Lin,
+      and her face remained white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+      the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to
+      sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I walked
+      about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith, ignorant she
+      was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could have told
+      Jessamine the same old story myself&mdash;or almost; but what had it to do
+      with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with something
+      left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the moon edge
+      into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow, seemingly near,
+      like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of the sage-brush
+      flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and near things, and
+      all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were in bed. Dark
+      windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the water-tank, a
+      dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx emblem, the
+      vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a door
+      creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up and
+      spoke in a half-awed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a-crying,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: &ldquo;I'm
+      sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+      sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe she's mad,&rdquo; I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+      he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the plain,
+      and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young Billy fell
+      asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he who had
+      brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him. But that
+      man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened, and it was
+      he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and stand to
+      watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the door, and,
+      coming over to me, stood looking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; I said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him gently.
+      &ldquo;Wake, son,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You and I must get to our camp now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now?&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;Can't we wait till morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+      saddles on.&rdquo; As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. &ldquo;She is in
+      there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She's in there. So near.&rdquo; He looked, and turned to the
+      hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. &ldquo;I
+      understand her words,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Her words, the meaning of them. But
+      not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't
+      blame me!&rdquo; he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she
+      forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I didn't
+      intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she never
+      realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that was
+      not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long&mdash;and
+      I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she
+      says I have a wife livin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nonsense,&rdquo; I declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' mustn't say that,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+      She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+      different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+      view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+      that she's honest, and loves me true&mdash;&rdquo; His voice broke for a moment.
+      &ldquo;She said she'd wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But
+      perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+      something back of law. She said she'd wait&mdash;always. And when I took
+      it in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and
+      the chickens&mdash;well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and
+      waked Billy to clear out and quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you tell her?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+      Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, man!&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll wait
+      too&mdash;always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would yu'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+      horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black,
+      brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the
+      moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear
+      radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and
+      that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature
+      was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw
+      them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted.
+      Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!&rdquo; she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+      last good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+      flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+      were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+      moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+      window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing
+      over Separ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to ask
+      questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people and
+      aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not guide
+      one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it. Now
+      except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine Buckner
+      had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she been shut
+      up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine. Had this experience been
+      hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr. McLean the friendly and
+      singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said that she was very
+      well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr. McLean had stayed
+      away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what she expected of
+      him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and &ldquo;yours sincerely and
+      always, 'Neighbor.'&rdquo; Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk&mdash;if Lin was
+      busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop quietly
+      with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and there she
+      would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not like his
+      adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would adopt
+      him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin&mdash;until the school
+      opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about
+      how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any
+      man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon&mdash;young
+      Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink&mdash;the
+      only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can write a lot quicker than Lin,&rdquo; said Billy, upon arriving. &ldquo;He was
+      fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling in
+      our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to the
+      cabin for my clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say!&rdquo; said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+      box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at
+      Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors. But
+      sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+      Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+      being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. &ldquo;Honey
+      Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;He says you
+      couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin
+      ain't worked it like he done in old times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,&rdquo; said Jessamine, buoyantly. &ldquo;And
+      that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it
+      clears, and then we'll go for our ride.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Billy. &ldquo;When does a man get too old to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he
+      must be thirty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old!&rdquo; exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Lin ain't been married very much,&rdquo; pursued Billy. &ldquo;Mother's the only
+      one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's better to,&rdquo; said Jessamine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don't think so,&rdquo; said Billy, with disparagement. &ldquo;You ought to see
+      mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,&rdquo; said the
+      boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. &ldquo;Why won't you if he
+      don't mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight
+      in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her
+      to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries about the
+      cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read
+      various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent.
+      But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four o'clock
+      found them much where they had been at eight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you.&rdquo; He was at the window,
+      kicking the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nine times since dinner,&rdquo; she replied, with tireless good humor.
+      &ldquo;Now if you ask me twelve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll tell?&rdquo; said the boy, swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke into a laugh. &ldquo;No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home. When
+      I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me three
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better save 'em up, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty all
+      over.&rdquo; He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been tight
+      closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the dust like
+      a sea. &ldquo;I wish the old train would come,&rdquo; observed Billy, continuing to
+      kick the wall. &ldquo;I wish I was going somewheres.&rdquo; Smoky, level, and hot, the
+      south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred unbroken miles. The plain
+      was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute the near buildings became
+      invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above this travelling blur of the
+      soil the top of the water-tank alone rose bulging into the clear sun. The
+      sand spirals would lick like flames along the bulk of the lofty tub, and
+      soar skyward. It was not shipping season. The freight-cars stood idle in a
+      long line. No cattle huddled in the corrals. No strangers moved in town.
+      No cow-ponies dozed in front of the saloon. Their riders were distant in
+      ranch and camp. Human noise was extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of
+      the sultry blasts the place lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. &ldquo;Why
+      won't you tell me?&rdquo; droned Billy. For some time he had been returning,
+      like a mosquito brushed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's ten times,&rdquo; said Jessamine, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+      less glad now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jessamine, &ldquo;there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+      government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+      take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+      ask him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+      make a direct rejoinder. &ldquo;I guess I'll go outside now,&rdquo; said he, with a
+      threat in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one side
+      of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the freight-cars,&rdquo;
+       he stated, more loudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+      restraint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Just as
+      if I was a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+      you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+      don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+      like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to tell
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not a bit the same, because&mdash;because&mdash;because I treat
+      'em square and because it's not their business. But every time I ask
+      anybody 'most anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and
+      I'll be ten soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a
+      mother I'm agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em,
+      when they bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I
+      had. Guess I will, too, and watch 'em step around.&rdquo; For a moment his mind
+      dwelt upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness, Billy!&rdquo; said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking. &ldquo;The
+      whole heel is scorched off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He eyed the ruin with indifference. &ldquo;Ah, that was last month when I and
+      Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs. Chuck
+      it away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And spoil the pair? No, indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped from
+      home. Lin kind o' mends 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he?&rdquo; said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+      and things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd be
+      looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Billy pondered. &ldquo;And so I said to Lin,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;why didn't he
+      send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey Wiggin
+      laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the cook he
+      asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she chucked 'em
+      like she always did father's and mine. I was with father, you know, when
+      mother was married to Lin that time.&rdquo; He paused again, while his thoughts
+      and fears struggled. &ldquo;But Lin says I needn't ever go back,&rdquo; he went on,
+      reasoning and confiding to her. &ldquo;Lin don't like mother any more, I guess.&rdquo;
+       His pondering grew still deeper, and he looked at Jessamine for some
+      while. Then his face wakened with a new theory. &ldquo;Don't Lin like you any
+      more?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried Jessamine, crimsoning, &ldquo;yes! Why, he sent you to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+      you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+      another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you any
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I hope he loves me,&rdquo; murmured Jessamine. &ldquo;Always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope so too,&rdquo; said Billy, earnestly. &ldquo;For I like you. When I seen
+      him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed for you, I
+      was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be awful. I
+      wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things. Ah, pshaw!
+      I wasn't going to stand that.&rdquo; Billy now came close to Jessamine. &ldquo;I do
+      wish you would come and live with me and Lin,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Lin's awful
+      nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I know it?&rdquo; said Jessamine, tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him,&rdquo; went on Billy. &ldquo;And I
+      seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you found
+      out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing happens at
+      all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was not
+      going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever things she
+      had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train, and
+      the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties behind
+      the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the window to
+      watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed out from the
+      yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then with steam and
+      humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long dust-choked train
+      emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted. There was no one to
+      go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The conductor looked in on
+      business, but she had no telegraphic orders for him. The express agent
+      jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He received his daily smile and nod
+      of friendly discouragement. Then the light bundle of mail was flung inside
+      the door. Separ had no mail to go out. As she was picking up the letters
+      young Billy passed her like a shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had
+      descended from the train, a man and a large woman. His clothes were loose
+      and careless upon him. He held valises, and stood uncertainly looking
+      about him in the storm. Her firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her
+      hat was a large, handsome feather. Along between the several cars brakemen
+      leaned out, watched her, and grinned to each other. But her big,
+      hard-shining blue eyes were fixed curiously upon the station where
+      Jessamine was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all night we may be here, is it?&rdquo; she said to the man, harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to help that?&rdquo; he retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+      Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+      entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+      pole-wagon at Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out and
+      escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because Jessamine
+      spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Governor Barker has not been around here?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon so, sir.&rdquo; Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself out.
+      Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was mostly
+      achieved thus, in amity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the platform the man found his wife again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And we'll eat as we
+      travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her.&rdquo; She made a gesture
+      toward the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;what do you want with her. Don't you know who she
+      is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+      and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+      of her talks to the likes of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+      clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+      why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it was
+      you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this country to
+      have a look at my old friends&mdash;and&rdquo; (she laughed loudly and nodded at
+      the station) &ldquo;my old friends' new friends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned to
+      her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and heard
+      a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the large woman
+      with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the stranger spoke
+      then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was something of threat
+      in the strong animal countenance, something of laughter ready to break
+      out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been in the face, and now, as
+      substitute for what was gone, was the brag look of assertion that it was
+      still all there. Many stranded travellers knocked at Jessamine's door, and
+      now, as always, she offered the hospitalities of her neat abode, the only
+      room in Separ fit for a woman. As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and
+      listened, the door blew shut with a crash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How you have grown!&rdquo; the man was saying; and he smiled. &ldquo;Come, shake
+      hands. I did not think to see you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare you to touch me!&rdquo; Billy screamed. &ldquo;No, I'll never come with you. Lin
+      says I needn't to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the wheel.
+      &ldquo;Lord, Lord!&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+      bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+      and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in his
+      whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were there to
+      perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved together
+      upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered in the opens by
+      the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and golden-chimneyed
+      bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the greater valley.
+      Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered the mountains
+      where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel of shafts and
+      turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the trees. Through
+      there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the cool quaking asps
+      and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ. Along the ridge-pole
+      of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream, sat McLean's turkeys,
+      and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by his cabin and fenced
+      garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney into the air, in which
+      were no sounds but the running water and the afternoon chirp of birds.
+      Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher sat, lonely, inattentive,
+      polishing the treasured weapon as if it were not already long clean. His
+      target stood some twenty steps in front of him&mdash;a small
+      cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with bullets which he
+      had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently he lifted the
+      pistol and looked at its name&mdash;the word &ldquo;Neighbor&rdquo; engraved upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said he, aloud, &ldquo;if she keeps the rust off mine?&rdquo; Then he
+      lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+      down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but no
+      one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little distance
+      up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for the vehicle
+      to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they came, a man
+      and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat down again.
+      Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in silence and the
+      drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with good looks
+      sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the eye. As the woman
+      had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now, upright, bold, and
+      massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled upon her stolid
+      features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to everything around
+      them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead noise, the reins
+      bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung low. So they drew
+      close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into his face and went
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening,&rdquo; said he, clearing his throat. &ldquo;We heard you was in
+      cow-camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change crossed
+      his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs out as he
+      sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look natural,&rdquo; said the woman, familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seem to be fixed nice here,&rdquo; continued the man. &ldquo;Hadn't heard of it.
+      Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wheel wants greasing,&rdquo; said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay to supper,&rdquo; said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.&rdquo; He twitched the
+      reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. &ldquo;Better
+      stay to supper,&rdquo; he suggested, very distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. &ldquo;Better
+      stay to supper,&rdquo; drawled McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man looked up at his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So yus need me!&rdquo; she broke out. &ldquo;Ain't got heart enough in yer played-out
+      body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband stepped to the ground. &ldquo;I didn't suppose you'd want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her blue
+      staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, yus ain't changed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Same in your looks and same in your
+      actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wanted chickens for supper,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. &ldquo;I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares. As
+      for&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+      &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo; &ldquo;As for you,&rdquo; she continued to Mr. Lusk, &ldquo;don't you be
+      standing dumb same as the horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better take him to the stable, Lusk,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his room,
+      and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his guests no
+      further attention, nor did either of them come in where he was, nor did
+      the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down in the air, and
+      she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he made ready round the
+      stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the setting sunlight, were
+      the only sounds about the cabin. When the host looked into the door of the
+      next room to announce that his meal was served, the woman sat in her chair
+      no longer, but stood with her back to him by a shelf. She gave a slight
+      start at his summons, and replaced something. He saw that she had been
+      examining &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; and his face hardened suddenly to fierceness as he
+      looked at her; but he repeated quietly that she had better come in. Thus
+      did the three sit down to their meal. Occasionally a word about handing
+      some dish fell from one or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk
+      took out his watch and mentioned the hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu've not ate especially hearty,&rdquo; said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; asserted Lusk. &ldquo;Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+      interests to look after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lusk rose and looked at his wife. &ldquo;It'll be ten now before we get to
+      Drybone,&rdquo; said he. And he went down to the stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. &ldquo;I know you seen
+      me,&rdquo; she said, without looking at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw you when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.&rdquo; She sat twisting and
+      pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+      and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+      that he wished to reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you claim that pistol is yourn,&rdquo; she said next, &ldquo;I'll tell you I know
+      better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have to
+      guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have
+      seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!&rdquo; The woman uttered another sudden
+      laugh. &ldquo;I knowed about her&mdash;all. Things get heard of in this world.
+      Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time,
+      and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!&rdquo; Her voice grew slow and
+      absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: &ldquo;It had
+      travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was
+      known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you,
+      and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks
+      that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have
+      their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she
+      knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin' the day you
+      married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me
+      up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was
+      plain she did not want yus. It give me a queer feelin' to see that girl.
+      It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and
+      did not know love. Wait&mdash;wait, Lin! Yu' never hit me yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Nor now. I'm not Lusk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' looked so&mdash;so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old
+      days. Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and
+      say, 'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love
+      yus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; breathed McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+      Jessamine Buckner?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+      flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she spoke pleasant to me&mdash;pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+      tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+      there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+      than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She put her
+      hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never speaking.
+      'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says she. 'Let me
+      get used to it.' And she sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+      a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+      around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+      your six-shooter right by it&mdash;and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+      before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear Creek?
+      It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right out
+      different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+      you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+      madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+      report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and hard
+      work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to yus
+      uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more that was
+      leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced. I knowed
+      your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first time how
+      men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me go on, and
+      when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to her, 'has
+      hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I know,&rdquo; she says, thoughtful-like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that you
+      have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+      different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+      luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+      suspicion the place&mdash;but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
+      the kind that breaks&mdash;if any kind does that. You may sit till the
+      gray hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got
+      manhood like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin'
+      the best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a while.
+      He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss Jessamine.
+      'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait, Lin, wait. Yus
+      needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's walled up for a
+      while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could have told you it was a lie,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+      'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus wants
+      him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second Best.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+      says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+      little &ldquo;Neighbor,&rdquo; which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+      his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after his
+      talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of mine,
+      but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin' me that
+      way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy thing to
+      think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell her about me.
+      He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to me till Lusk
+      came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the rest that went
+      nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they? You have learned
+      something by livin', I guess! And Lin&mdash;your Lin, not mine, nor never
+      mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right now&mdash;he has been
+      gay&mdash;gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of his! Could a
+      boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't touch what's the
+      true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for you hinder him like it
+      will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is different when it comes to
+      passion? We're all one thing then, but they ain't simple. They keep along
+      with lots of other things. I can't make yus know, and I guess it takes a
+      woman like I have been to learn their nature. But you did know he loved
+      you, and you sent him away, and you'll be homeless in yer house when he
+      has done the right thing by himself and found another girl.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+      what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin' at
+      me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw him
+      I would tell him to find a home.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing her?&rdquo;
+       asked the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk laughed. &ldquo;Oh, you innocent!&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said if I came she would leave Separ,&rdquo; muttered McLean, brooding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have kept my promise,&rdquo; Lin continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+      Maybe she's gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. &ldquo;I could be
+      there by to-morrow night,&rdquo; he murmured. Then his face softened. &ldquo;She would
+      never do such a thing!&rdquo; he said, to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+      that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+      interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+      eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+      him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+      beauty relighted the features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the same, same Lin everyways,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A woman is too many for
+      you still, Lin!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, I would not have treated you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+      quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At least I've had plenty of education in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+      come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+      hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in you
+      somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come to
+      know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and you
+      just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so comic
+      and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon. Say, Lin,
+      what made yus do that, anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't hardly say,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Only noticing him so turruble
+      anxious to quit me&mdash;well, a man acts without thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were good
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which times?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yus never loved me!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+      did. Only say it was once that way.&rdquo; And as he sat, she came and put her
+      arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+      held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+      her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+      out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+      after him and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+      where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his hand
+      against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes. Then he
+      continued on his way. &ldquo;Lusk!&rdquo; he called, presently, and in a few steps
+      more, &ldquo;Lusk!&rdquo; Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the husband
+      he began, with quiet evenness, &ldquo;Your wife wants to know&mdash;&rdquo; But he
+      stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The door
+      was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the road
+      went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars were
+      faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks as they
+      sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the trees by the
+      stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by sounded the
+      splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses fed, quietly
+      crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it again. He walked to
+      his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone there. Then he lifted
+      away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of the corral, while the
+      turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the roof. A rope was
+      hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the vine. He opened the
+      corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle of the field, where
+      the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But he ran and herded
+      them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the corral, and flung his
+      noose over two. He dragged two saddles&mdash;men's saddles&mdash;from the
+      stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with the horses saddled.
+      She was sitting quite still by the table where she had sat during the
+      meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look in at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lusk has gone,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I don't know what he expected you would do, or
+      I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with her dumb stare. &ldquo;Gone?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up and ride,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;You are going to Drybone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drybone?&rdquo; she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+      Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table clean,
+      the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she followed with
+      a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small bundle for his own
+      journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse beside a stump. When
+      at his sharp order she came out, he locked his cabin and hung the key by a
+      window, where travellers could find it and be at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed. &ldquo;It's
+      about his size,&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle&mdash;this
+      they had often done together in former years&mdash;and so they took their
+      way down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the
+      first two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put
+      to a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
+      and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+      greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+      through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+      this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+      to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will ask you one thing,&rdquo; said Lin, after ten miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I understand that she&mdash;Miss Buckner, I mean&mdash;mentioned she
+      might be going away from Separ?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I know what you understood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.&rdquo; Her laugh rang out, loud and forlorn&mdash;one
+      brief burst that startled the horses and that must have sounded far across
+      the sage-brush. &ldquo;You men are rich,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+      road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the
+      endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and presently,
+      moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made out the
+      wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put your carbine down,&rdquo; said McLean to Lusk. &ldquo;It's not robbers. It's your
+      wife I'm bringing you.&rdquo; He spoke very quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher &ldquo;Get in, then,&rdquo; he said
+      to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Town's not far now,&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Maybe you would prefer riding the balance
+      of the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd&mdash;&rdquo; But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question
+      overcame her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+      continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the road
+      slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the immensity
+      of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the whole
+      unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged from
+      the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom it cut in
+      close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of sand, smooth
+      as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to breathe their
+      horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through the stillness.
+      Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone bridge, but not the
+      bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank showed where stood the
+      hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the table-land and reached
+      the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief historian, the graveyard.
+      Beneath its slanting headboards and wind-shifted sand lay many more people
+      than lived in Drybone. They passed by the fence of this shelterless acre
+      on the hill, and shoutings and high music began to reach them. At the foot
+      of the hill they saw the sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended
+      the gray strip of road. The many sounds&mdash;feet, voices, and music&mdash;grew
+      clearer, unravelling from their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became
+      a tune that could be known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a dance to-night,&rdquo; said the wife to the husband. &ldquo;Hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm telling you to hurry,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;My new dress is in that wagon.
+      There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and the
+      older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat and
+      spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen voice
+      carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+      following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If he
+      did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher was
+      still less to his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,&rdquo; mused Lin, as he rode slowly
+      along. &ldquo;He don't care for himself any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day its
+      hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants were
+      rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male and female,
+      all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their bottles as to
+      make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second childhood which
+      had set in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+      deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and foot,
+      and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their captains upon
+      its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of it. When the War
+      Department ordered the captains to catch Indians, the wives bade them
+      Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the captains to let the
+      Indians go again, still they made the best of it. You must not waste
+      Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many people in Washington
+      and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians, armed with weapons
+      sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was not entirely
+      harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone graveyard. The
+      pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it: &ldquo;Sacred to the memory
+      of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne, May 6, 1875.&rdquo; Or it
+      would be, &ldquo;Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage Creek.&rdquo; But even the
+      financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve the Indian in Drybone's
+      neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands came treading with the next
+      step of civilization into this huge domain, the soldiers were taken away.
+      Some of them went West to fight more Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona.
+      The battles of the others being done, they went East in better coffins to
+      sleep where their mothers or their comrades wanted them. Though wind and
+      rain wrought changes upon the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which
+      these soldiers left behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as
+      were the tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
+      empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
+      cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
+      sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as shall
+      presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
+      professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day; and
+      the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead of
+      guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and there
+      was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old boots.
+      Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow, ragged
+      grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens
+      and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of
+      which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for inside. Among
+      the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for beds too late at
+      the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in the morning air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+      Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+      scalping had disappeared. &ldquo;Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+      accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885.&rdquo; Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+      &ldquo;Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months.&rdquo; This unique
+      corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing tale
+      of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be enough.
+      The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with wood. But
+      in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer than twenty or
+      thirty miles&mdash;none, that is, to make boards of a sufficient width for
+      epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go to hew a board for a
+      man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he said his name was, and to
+      whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling poker debt. Hence it came
+      to pass that headboards grew into a sort of directory. They were light to
+      lift from one place to another. A single coat of white paint would wipe
+      out the first tenant's name sufficiently to paint over it the next
+      comer's. By this thrifty habit the original boards belonging to the
+      soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the new civilian population;
+      and though at first sight you might be puzzled by the layers of names
+      still visible beneath the white paint, you could be sure that the clearest
+      and blackest was the one to which the present tenant had answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+      history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom&mdash;one thin
+      line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+      slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+      the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+      For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed over
+      to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+      government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+      The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+      Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+      not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+      the notice of Drybone's one official&mdash;the coroner! For they did keep
+      a coroner&mdash;Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next
+      door in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally
+      of Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+      industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a living.
+      The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and instantly
+      spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies full of youth and
+      their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by twenties, by fifties,
+      and out again next morning, penniless always and happy. And then the
+      Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each other till the
+      innocents should come to town again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+      furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+      post and corner&mdash;patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
+      an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
+      saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards at
+      the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for their
+      easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the fiddle at
+      Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds there, the
+      dance was being done regularly. &ldquo;Regularly&rdquo; meant that upon the conclusion
+      of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and invited her to
+      choose and it was also regular that the lady should choose. Beer and
+      whiskey were the alternatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+      cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+      saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+      what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see why
+      his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so many gallant
+      years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely cow-puncher sat
+      mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toothpick Kid is here,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and Limber Jim, and the Doughie. You'd
+      think he'd stay away after the trouble he&mdash;I expect that pinto is
+      Jerky Bill's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go home!&rdquo; said a hearty voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+      sombreness. &ldquo;I'd forgot you'd be here,&rdquo; said he. And he sprang to the
+      ground. &ldquo;It's fine to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go home!&rdquo; repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient friend's
+      hand. &ldquo;You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yu' seem to be on hand yourself,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+      jocular, if he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+      can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doc,&rdquo; interrupted Lin, &ldquo;it's plumb fine to see yu'!&rdquo; Again he shook
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I.&rdquo; His Excellency the Hon.
+      Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+      white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+      McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp,
+      a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an
+      older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different
+      questions. But he knew what he knew. &ldquo;Well, Drybone's the same old
+      Drybone,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see how you walk
+      nowadays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin took a few steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.&rdquo; And his Excellency beamed with
+      professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+      leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the hospital
+      to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon he had been
+      carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shows, does it?&rdquo; said Lin. &ldquo;Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+      I'm&mdash;when I'm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down?&rdquo; suggested his Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc. Down,&rdquo; the cow-puncher confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the Governor's
+      good heart. &ldquo;I've got some whiskey along on the trip&mdash;Eastern
+      whiskey,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Come over to my room awhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to sleep all night onced,&rdquo; said McLean, as they went. &ldquo;Then I come
+      to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts could
+      make yu'&mdash;make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat, yu'
+      know!&rdquo; he stated, suddenly. &ldquo;And I expect one or two in camp lately have
+      not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+      feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+      feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among the
+      rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard balls
+      reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars and calm
+      splendid dimness of the plain. &ldquo;'Though every prospect pleases, and only
+      man is vile,'&rdquo; he quoted. &ldquo;But don't tell the Republican party I said so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+      didn't know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+      world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+      over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+      Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and nodded
+      his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should have done
+      the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never remembered he was
+      Governor at all with political friends here who had begged a word or two.
+      He became just Dr. Barker again, the young hospital surgeon (the hospital
+      that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again his patient&mdash;&mdash;Lin,
+      the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless, engaging, disobedient, his
+      leg broken and his heart light, with no Jessamine or conscience to rob his
+      salt of its savor. While he now told his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled
+      away careless as ever, and the crack of the billiard balls sounded as of
+      old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody has told you about this, I expect,&rdquo; said the lover. He brought
+      forth the little pistol, &ldquo;Neighbor.&rdquo; He did not hand it across to Barker,
+      but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the doctor to
+      see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was half hidden in
+      the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but still stood and
+      soon drew it back. &ldquo;I take it around,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and when one of those
+      stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she wants to get rid of
+      me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when I'm off where it's
+      handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I have to tell you
+      what a fool I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whiskey's your side,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+      like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+      more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+      'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered. &ldquo;Not
+      been to our dance, Governor?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this evening
+      he must forego the pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable,&rdquo; said the coroner.
+      &ldquo;They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble in Drybone,
+      but trouble comes to us&mdash;as everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shooting,&rdquo; suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any in
+      this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+      warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey,&rdquo; remarked the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+      politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+      number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health the
+      matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead of sleeping
+      on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next campaign. &ldquo;Boys
+      will be boys,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They ain't pulled any guns to-night. But I come
+      away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't
+      suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's after you,&rdquo; he mentioned
+      incidentally to Lin. &ldquo;He's fillin' up, and says he's after you.&rdquo; McLean
+      nodded placidly, and with scant politeness. He wished this visitor would
+      go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the whiskey. He filled himself a
+      glass. &ldquo;Governor, it has my compliments,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Ambrosier. Honey-doo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boys, good boys!&rdquo; The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+      &ldquo;Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+      generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo.&rdquo; He settled himself
+      deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean rose abruptly. &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'm going to Separ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Separ!&rdquo; exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. &ldquo;Oh, stay with us, stay
+      with us.&rdquo; He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know how well I wish you,&rdquo; said Barker to Lin. &ldquo;I'll just see you
+      start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and walked
+      toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead ruins
+      loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen jockey
+      cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and confusion
+      were set up, and the tune broke off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just like old times!&rdquo; said his Excellency. &ldquo;Where's the dump-pile!&rdquo; It
+      was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to be
+      screened from wandering bullets. &ldquo;A man don't forget his habits,&rdquo; declared
+      the Governor. &ldquo;Makes me feel young again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes me feel old,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;Hark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds like my name,&rdquo; said Barker. They listened. &ldquo;Oh yes. Of course.
+      That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+      minute or so to finish their excitement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't hear any shooting,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;It's something, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and the
+      murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices wandered
+      outside, calling the doctor's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But it's to be done, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+      sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+      waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+      densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and
+      swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be
+      ready when the music should resume. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; they asked. &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo;
+       And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the caresses
+      which the partners gave them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+      after many dances and drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Doc!&rdquo; cried an older one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Doc!&rdquo; chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+      since his day. And the throng caught up the words: &ldquo;Here's Doc! here's
+      Doc!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this flood.
+      Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by those who
+      meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear unfinished&mdash;versions,
+      contradictions, a score of facts. It had been wolf-poison. It had been
+      &ldquo;Rough on Rats.&rdquo; It had been something in a bottle. There was little
+      steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker reached his patient, where she
+      sat in her new dress, hailing him with wild inebriate gayety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must get her to her room, friends,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must get her to her room,&rdquo; went the word. &ldquo;Leave Doc get her to her
+      room.&rdquo; And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'&rdquo; shouted Mrs. Lusk.... &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls,' you
+      fiddler!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll come back,&rdquo; said Barker to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that bottle,
+      Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!&rdquo; She was holding the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help him!&rdquo; said the crowd. &ldquo;Help Doc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of ribbons,
+      fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has six ounces of laudanum in her,&rdquo; Barker told them at the top of
+      his voice. &ldquo;It won't wait all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a whirlwind!&rdquo; said Mrs. Lusk. &ldquo;That's my game! And you done your
+      share,&rdquo; she cried to the fiddler. &ldquo;Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+      Girls' once more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling and
+      ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some fiercely
+      forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers, and she
+      would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for her. But now
+      she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin McLean. And when
+      one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone to shoot him, she
+      laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth. But even in the midst
+      of the joke she asked again in the same voice where was Lin McLean. He
+      came beside her among more jokes. He had kept himself near, and now at
+      sight of him she reached out and held him. &ldquo;Tell them to leave me go to
+      sleep, Lin,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker saw a chance. &ldquo;Persuade her to come along,&rdquo; said he to McLean.
+      &ldquo;Minutes are counting now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll come,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+      still to Lin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the old friends nudged each other. &ldquo;Back seats for us,&rdquo; they
+      said. &ldquo;But we've had our turn in front ones.&rdquo; Then, thinking they would be
+      useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering Barker
+      and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made its slow
+      way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and holes. Thus,
+      presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set her down,
+      crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest gathered
+      thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing. The notion
+      to stay was plain on their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker surveyed them. &ldquo;Give the doctor a show now, boys,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You've
+      done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you,&rdquo; he whispered to
+      McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering of
+      wind. &ldquo;Don't crowd his elbows,&rdquo; they began to say at once, and told each
+      other to come away. &ldquo;We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want to be
+      shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty near
+      absent.&rdquo; The room thinned of them forthwith. &ldquo;Fix her up good, Doc,&rdquo; they
+      said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the threshold and porch
+      with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one or other stumbled on
+      the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet. &ldquo;You want to tame
+      yourself,&rdquo; was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid came
+      precipitately back. &ldquo;Her cash,&rdquo; they said. And leaving the notes and
+      coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on the way back to the dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you,&rdquo; repeated Barker to McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. &ldquo;Jessamine wants him about
+      now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!&rdquo; And she laughed her hard,
+      rich laugh, looking from one to the other. &ldquo;Not the two of yus can't save
+      me,&rdquo; she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+      thickness sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk her up and down,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Keep her moving. I'll look what I
+      can find. Keep her moving brisk.&rdquo; At once he was out of the door; and
+      before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+      across the quadrangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Buffalo Girls!'&rdquo; exclaimed the woman. &ldquo;Old times! Old times!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;Walk.&rdquo; And he took her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with him
+      easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever he
+      brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the open
+      door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark. But presently
+      she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned sullen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; said she, laughing. But she found that she must go with
+      him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're hurting me,&rdquo; she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+      her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. &ldquo;He's gone, Lin,&rdquo;
+       she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+      that he had set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave me down. You hurt,&rdquo; she pleaded, hanging on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the floor,&rdquo; she pleaded again. &ldquo;Just one minute on the floor. He'll
+      think you could not keep me lifted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+      had undertaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's playing out!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You'll be played out soon.&rdquo; She
+      laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more to
+      feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+      &ldquo;Jessamine!&rdquo; she whispered to him. &ldquo;Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion you,
+      Lin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk sense,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll go;
+      you can't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk, walk!&rdquo; he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing his
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle&mdash;Ah, walk me to
+      glory, then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for
+      keeps. Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet&mdash;I'll bet she
+      has never seen you look so. Let me&mdash;let me watch yus. Anyway, she
+      knows I came first!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped her savagely. &ldquo;First! You and twenty of yu' don't&mdash;God!!
+      what do I talk to her for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;because&mdash;I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off&mdash;but
+      he had to sling&mdash;you can't&mdash;stop&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through deeper
+      and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+      continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+      with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+      shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+      body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+      breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+      fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. &ldquo;Buffalo Girls!&rdquo; he
+      shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her as
+      though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to wake,
+      he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load in his
+      grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. &ldquo;So I've got
+      you!&rdquo; he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came up
+      with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+      together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+      McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged and
+      encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him, threatened
+      him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left him suddenly
+      and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him here. He glanced
+      at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men. The husband's brief
+      courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who himself could not rise.
+      Barker pulled them apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lin, boy, you're not hurt?&rdquo; he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+      cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not hurt?&rdquo; repeated Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered the cow-puncher, slowly. &ldquo;I guess not.&rdquo; He looked about the
+      room and at the door. &ldquo;I got interrupted,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be all right soon,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody cares for me!&rdquo; cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+      weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; ordered Barker, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't accuse me, Governor,&rdquo; screamed Lusk. &ldquo;I'm innocent.&rdquo; And he rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. &ldquo;I'll not say there
+      was much chance for her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But any she had is gone through you.
+      She'll die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody cares for me!&rdquo; repeated the man. &ldquo;He has learned my boy to scorn
+      me.&rdquo; He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay sitting,&rdquo; said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+      help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+      sank as he had been. &ldquo;I guess I don't amount to much,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I feel
+      like I was nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm something,&rdquo; said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+      breath. &ldquo;And I know what she weighs.&rdquo; He stared admiringly through his
+      spectacles at the seated man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+      Barker's face. &ldquo;Doc,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+      this way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?&rdquo; pursued McLean,
+      wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You six-foot infant!&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Look at your hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lin stared at it&mdash;the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin
+      grooved raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the
+      struggle had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his
+      wrists and his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked
+      over at the bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something,
+      a sound, not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher
+      shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is strong,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+      yet, maybe. Queer world!&rdquo; he moralized. &ldquo;People half killing themselves to
+      keep one in it who wanted to go&mdash;and one that nobody wanted to stay!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+      him. &ldquo;I would not want,&rdquo; he said, with hesitating utterance&mdash;&ldquo;I'd not
+      wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker touched him on the arm. &ldquo;If there had been another man I could
+      trust&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust!&rdquo; broke in the cow-puncher. &ldquo;Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu' ever
+      done me. I know I am a man now&mdash;if my nerve ain't gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've known you were a man since I knew you!&rdquo; said the hearty Governor.
+      And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. &ldquo;As for your nerve,
+      I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after&rdquo;&mdash;he glanced at the bed&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the nerve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'&mdash;don't let's while
+      she's&mdash;I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+      stammering to say. &ldquo;What do you want, Judge?&rdquo; he inquired, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; began Slaghammer to Barker&mdash;&ldquo;I am informed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak quieter, Judge,&rdquo; said the cow-puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, &ldquo;that there
+      was a case for the coroner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be notified,&rdquo; put in McLean again. &ldquo;Meanwhile you'll talk quiet in
+      this room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a little early, Judge,&rdquo; said Barker, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your ten dollars are safe,&rdquo; said McLean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+      down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and he
+      was desirous of a second term.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under the apprehension that it had already occurred&mdash;the
+      misapprehension&mdash;I took steps to impanel a jury,&rdquo; said he, addressing
+      both Barker and McLean. &ldquo;They are&mdash;ah&mdash;waiting outside.
+      Responsible men, Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few
+      responsible men to-night, but I procured these at a little game where they
+      were&mdash;ah&mdash;losing. You may go back, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he, going to
+      the door. &ldquo;I will summon you in proper time.&rdquo; He looked in the room again.
+      &ldquo;Is the husband not intending&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's enough, Judge,&rdquo; said McLean. &ldquo;There's too many here without adding
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge,&rdquo; spoke a voice at the door, &ldquo;ain't she ready yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is still passing away,&rdquo; observed Slaghammer, piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I was thinking,&rdquo; said the man&mdash;&ldquo;I was just&mdash;You see, us
+      jury is dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and&mdash;Judge,
+      would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+      if it's a sure thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see none, my friend,&rdquo; said Slaghammer, benevolently, &ldquo;since it must
+      be.&rdquo; He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+      importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+      Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+      five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+      would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+      withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+      received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+      his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+      thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+      than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant to watch
+      until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew documents from
+      his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over them. In all
+      precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late. The fiddle,
+      the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls travelled clear
+      and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently steps unsteadily drew
+      near, and round the corner of the door a voice, plaintive and diffident,
+      said, &ldquo;Judge, ain't she most pretty near ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wake up, Judge!&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Your jury has gone dry again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man appeared round the door&mdash;a handsome, dishevelled fellow&mdash;with
+      hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a second
+      voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his friends.
+      Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once to napping.
+      From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each arriving more
+      unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his fee and no more
+      messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in his chair. McLean and
+      Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink ribbons, breathed and
+      breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping and falling with light
+      sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear itself away, and through the
+      stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and expand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge,&rdquo; said Barker, quietly, &ldquo;you may call them now.&rdquo; And with careful
+      steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+      lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+      but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+      ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. &ldquo;Hind sight
+      is a turruble clear way o' seein' things,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I think I'll take a
+      walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;The jury only need me, and I'll join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay had
+      been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had shared
+      each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their brains
+      and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and growing
+      weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant beds. Each
+      had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and thus,
+      unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the wide
+      sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+      dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received Barker's
+      testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even while he was
+      issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars came Chalkeye
+      and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in their hopes and
+      good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both. The night had
+      gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be fine. It must be
+      well with everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say!&rdquo; they exclaimed, taken aback. &ldquo;Too bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+      thought paused for a moment. &ldquo;Her gone!&rdquo; they murmured. &ldquo;Hard to get used
+      to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Lusk,&rdquo; answered Slaghammer, &ldquo;doubtless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the grass.
+      She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill&mdash;not Dollar Bill, Jerky
+      Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge&mdash;to fix up a hearse, and we'll
+      be back.&rdquo; The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and instantly
+      were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+      hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+      the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+      bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in the
+      cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger until
+      breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and joking; and
+      across the river some were holding horse-races upon the level beyond the
+      hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty, wandering shouts broke
+      out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed at cans or prairie dogs or
+      anything, cracked as they galloped at large. Their speeding, clear-cut
+      forms would shine upon the bluffs, and, descending, merge in the dust
+      their horses had raised. Yet all this was nothing in the vastness of the
+      growing day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+      Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+      strange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+      riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+      grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was a
+      calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead. It
+      was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a coffin, boys!&rdquo; said one, shrewd at guessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+      wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+      brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+      quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already were
+      Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing up with
+      their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and comment.
+      Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And it amazed
+      each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things with the
+      others. &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; each one began. &ldquo;Her, does he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, pshaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. &ldquo;Dead?
+      Why, pshaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems Doc couldn't swim her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't swim her out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;there's one less of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure! She was one of the boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed her at Laramie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed loudly at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a lonesome coffin,&rdquo; said the Doughie. &ldquo;That the best you could
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd say so!&rdquo; said Toothpick Kid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choices are getting scarce up there,&rdquo; said Chalkeye. &ldquo;We looked the lot
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on the
+      hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+      rattling between them. &ldquo;Where's your hearse, Jerky?&rdquo; asked Chalkeye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have her round in a minute,&rdquo; said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+      three or four others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same,&rdquo; repeated the Doughie. And they
+      surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did like fixin's,&rdquo; said Limber Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fixin's!&rdquo; said Toothpick Kid. &ldquo;That's easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted coffin
+      into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's store.
+      Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These had been
+      able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had stretched
+      themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some with not even
+      their hats taken off and some with their boots against the rough hair of
+      the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few waking, and so there
+      was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs were unrolled and flung
+      aside till many folds and colors draped the motionless sleepers, and at
+      length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards of this drab chintz were ripped
+      off, money treble its worth was thumped upon the counter, and they
+      returned, bearing it like a streamer to the coffin. While the noise of
+      their hammers filled the room, the hearse came tottering to the door,
+      pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an ambulance left behind by the
+      soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape, concave in body, its top blown
+      away in winds of long ago; and as they revolved, its wheels dished in and
+      out like hoops about to fall. While some made a harness from ropes, and
+      throwing the saddles off two ponies backed them to the vehicle, the body
+      was put in the coffin, now covered by the chintz. But the laudanum upon
+      the front of her dress revolted those who remembered their holidays with
+      her, and turning the woman upon her face, they looked their last upon her
+      flashing, colored ribbons, and nailed the lid down. So they carried her
+      out, but the concave body of the hearse was too short for the coffin; the
+      end reached out, and it might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the
+      reins, sat upon the other end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was
+      making ready to follow in some way. They had sought the husband, the chief
+      mourner. He, however, still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and
+      despising him as she had done, they left him to wake when he should
+      choose. Those men who could sit in their saddles rode escort, the old
+      friends nearest, and four held the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who
+      were to draw the hearse. They had never known harness before, and they
+      plunged with the men who held them. Behind the hearse the women followed
+      in a large ranch-wagon, this moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this,
+      and their foals gambolled around them. The great flat-topped dray for
+      hauling poles came last, with its four government mules. The cow-boys had
+      caught sight of it and captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they
+      carried the sleeping men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then,
+      searching Drybone outside and in for any more incapable of following, they
+      brought them, and the dray was piled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his teeth,
+      cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang away,
+      scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped past the
+      husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the grass.
+      Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the throng
+      cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with it, Jim!&rdquo; they shouted. &ldquo;You're a king!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and nearly
+      hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from it
+      leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air, he faced
+      the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The horsemen
+      came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth. Wheeling at
+      the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The skilful nooses
+      flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were dragged back to
+      the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started the wild ponies
+      quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the coffin steady in the
+      ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their fringed leather and
+      broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many of them swaying, their
+      faces full of health, and the sun and the strong drink. The women
+      followed, whispering a little; and behind them the slow dray jolted, with
+      its heaps of men waking from the depths of their whiskey and asking what
+      this was. So they went up the hill. When the riders reached the tilted
+      gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and scattered among the hillocks,
+      stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker and McLean, quietly waiting
+      there, and began choosing among the open, weather-drifted graves from
+      which the soldiers had been taken. Their figures went up and down the
+      uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said the Doughie, &ldquo;here's a good hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a deep one,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've struck a well here,&rdquo; said some more. &ldquo;Put her in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+      choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+      opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+      about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one end
+      of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they pulled
+      the ropes helplessly above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McLean spoke to Barker. &ldquo;I'd like to stop this,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but a man might
+      as well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might as well stop a cloud-burst,&rdquo; said Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doc. But it feels&mdash;it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+      McLeans.&rdquo; And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them and
+      lifted the cow-boy out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Slaghammer, stepping forward, &ldquo;this should proceed no
+      further without some&mdash;perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay
+      me?&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't use that on funerals,&rdquo; said the Doughie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?&rdquo; inquired the coroner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+      remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+      was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the hill
+      in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so returned.
+      But the book was beyond them. &ldquo;Take it, you; you take it,&rdquo; each one said.
+      False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages back and forth,
+      until impatience conquered them. They left the book and lowered the
+      coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly, decently,
+      steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the bottom with
+      was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid sand; and a
+      little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the same moment.
+      The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single jar, quietly
+      smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One removed his hat, and
+      then another, and then all. They stood eying each his neighbor, and
+      shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley. Then they filled in
+      the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near by, and wrote the name
+      and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sure one of us,&rdquo; said Chalkeye. &ldquo;Let's give her the Lament.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they followed his lead:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   &ldquo;Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me&mdash;
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down the
+      hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across many
+      sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves had
+      emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were gone&mdash;ready
+      with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or heroes, as the
+      hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted quadrangle the
+      sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind shook the aces and
+      kings in the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to mend,
+      and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after that
+      strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good man's heart
+      without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands despatched it
+      her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that visitor now,
+      she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on her table.
+      &ldquo;Why did he go away so quickly?&rdquo; she sighed. But when young Billy returned
+      to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a match for him. He
+      reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin McLean did not come
+      back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she had threatened. She
+      looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy, I'll tell you just why it is,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Lin thinks I'm not a
+      real girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;ah,&rdquo; drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;ah,&rdquo; went the boy, entirely angry. &ldquo;Anybody can tell you're a
+      girl.&rdquo; And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor
+      did his dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+      jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+      passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+      the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the boy,
+      and the man came into town galloping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought to
+      do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he held
+      her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say &ldquo;Forgive me! Oh, why have you
+      been so long?&rdquo; She took him back to the room where his picture was, and
+      made him sit, and sat herself close. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked him. For
+      through the love she read something else in his serious face. So then he
+      told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all that he had to
+      tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him. &ldquo;Dear, dear
+      neighbor!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+      Billy burst open the door. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I knowed Lin knowed you
+      were a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+      liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin on
+      Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the only care
+      of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though singularly
+      enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of Jessamine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                The black pines stand high up the hills,
+                  The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+                While through the canyon's riven cleft
+                  From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+                Serene above their paling shapes
+                  One star hath wakened in the sky.
+                And here in the gray world below
+                  Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+                Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+                  And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+                Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+                  Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+                Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+                  Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+                But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+                  And he goes singing might and main.
+          </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1385.txt b/old/1385.txt
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index 0000000..eeff225
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1385.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8613 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lin McLean
+
+Author: Owen Wister
+
+Posting Date: August 22, 2008 [EBook #1385]
+Release Date: July, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIN MCLEAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Brewer
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN
+
+By Owen Wister
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
+page.
+
+Always yours,
+
+OWEN WISTER
+
+Philadelphia, 1897
+
+
+
+
+HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+
+In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
+upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
+one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
+world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
+in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
+dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
+indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
+Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
+some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing
+day. The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef
+round-up, not yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding
+bachelors of the saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's
+credit on the ranch books.
+
+"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his blankets.
+
+The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
+from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
+upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
+bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
+south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
+River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
+forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
+mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
+riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside
+the mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
+impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so
+it wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush
+and the yellow, vanishing plains.
+
+"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.
+
+He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that
+made his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and
+limped blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was
+always more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the
+fork from Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
+shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
+his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
+shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
+water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
+returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
+breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+
+"Bugged up to kill!" exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+
+"He sure has not shaved again?" another inquired, with concern.
+
+"I ain't got my opera-glasses on," answered a third.
+
+"He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache," said a fourth.
+
+"My spring crop," remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, "has
+juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
+which wanders out of your face."
+
+"Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man," said the
+other.
+
+But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+
+Him Lin McLean at once addressed. "I was wantin' to speak to you," said
+he.
+
+The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. "I
+understand you're tired of work," he remarked.
+
+"Who told you?" asked the bewildered Lin.
+
+The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. "Well, I have a way
+of taking things in at a glance," said he. "That's why I'm foreman, I
+expect. So you've had enough work?"
+
+"My system's full of it," replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+thinking, he added, "And I'd like my time."
+
+Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+
+"It's good we're not busy," said the foreman.
+
+"Meanin' I'd quit all the same?" inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+
+"No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+post before it gets hot."
+
+The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek,
+and the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
+formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
+the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
+cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.
+
+"So-long!" he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might
+never be going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+demonstrative by habit.
+
+"Going to stop long at Washakie?" asked one.
+
+"Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now," another mentioned.
+
+"If there's a new girl," said a third, "kiss her one for me, and tell
+her I'm handsomer than you."
+
+"I ain't a deceiver of women," said Lin.
+
+"That's why you'll tell her," replied his friend.
+
+"Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?" asked the cook,
+grieved to lose him.
+
+"I'm after some variety," said the boy.
+
+"If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!"
+shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+
+This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+
+"So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?" said the
+foreman.
+
+"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+"Going to Denver?"
+
+"Why, maybe."
+
+"Take in San Francisco?"
+
+"Sounds slick."
+
+"Made any plans?"
+
+"Gosh, no!"
+
+"Don't want anything on your brain?"
+
+"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful
+song:
+
+   "'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'"
+
+They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
+bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses,
+upward and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind
+lay the deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees
+like bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also
+to the edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step
+farther away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed
+together over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple
+the great country which lay sunk beneath.
+
+"A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place," said Lin to the
+foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. "She's sure there,
+though," he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew
+thoughtful. "Shucks!" said he then, abruptly, "where's any joy in
+money that's comin' till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o'
+spot-cash."
+
+He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him.
+Thus they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to
+Fort Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+
+His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away
+on his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+entertainment--a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to
+attend the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending
+to some visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to
+watch the ring of painted naked savages.
+
+The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. "What's he quitting his
+job for?" he asked the foreman.
+
+"Same as most of 'em quit."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Been satisfactory?"
+
+"Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with
+a horse."
+
+"And worthless," suggested the post-trader.
+
+"Well--not yet. He's headed that way."
+
+"Been punching cattle long?"
+
+"Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most
+a year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte
+Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the
+fracture was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the
+hog-ranch across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker
+to tell you about that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went
+up over on to Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting
+outfit on Galena Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested
+in some Dutchwoman up there, but she had trouble--died, I think they
+said--and he came down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to
+Mexico or Africa next."
+
+"If you need him," said the post-trader, closing his ledger, "you can
+offer him five more a month."
+
+"That'll not hold him."
+
+"Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+I've got to see his room is fixed up for him."
+
+"The bishop!" said the foreman. "I've heard him highly spoken of."
+
+"You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man."
+
+"He's better than that; he's a man," stated the foreman--"at least so
+they tell me."
+
+Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a
+visit from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+wolf-dance this afternoon--red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was
+not only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went
+to look at him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal
+service this Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers
+and their families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the
+agency doctor, the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three
+gamblers, the waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was
+there because she was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in
+blankets, with two royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of
+squatting Indian children, silent and marvelling; and, on the back
+bench, the commanding officer's new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin
+McLean.
+
+Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and
+pageant, his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught
+resting upon him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content
+with the other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him
+and the stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel
+and found the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when
+a cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left
+them late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of
+the Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among
+their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
+keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
+while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
+to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
+from round his neck.
+
+The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
+breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
+caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
+into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
+silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
+of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now
+it prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
+address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a
+plain suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union
+Pacific Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River,
+had despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
+
+Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+
+"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
+neck and kissed him."
+
+The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+
+Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
+she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
+but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
+brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
+music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
+watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
+hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face
+and the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the
+alert, listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern
+how that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw
+morals, attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and
+they filled with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie
+went to sleep, and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same
+alert position till Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to
+sit down through the hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and
+all the people dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings,
+and the cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
+
+"What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?" inquired the lady, after a
+hundred yards.
+
+"Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?" asked Lin, absently.
+
+"No, indeed. What's them?"
+
+"Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too." Mr. McLean fell silent
+again.
+
+"I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye," said
+Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered
+away with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+
+Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+
+"Only," protested Sabina, "I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out
+and--well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River
+politeness."
+
+But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the
+afternoon. Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat
+levels of sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They
+splashed across the many little running channels which lead water
+through that thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no
+nearer, behind them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green
+trees, dwindled to a toy village.
+
+"My! but it's far to everywheres here," exclaimed Sabina, "and it's
+little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do
+the talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?"
+
+"That's Little Wind River Canyon," said the young man. "Feel like goin'
+there, Miss Stone?"
+
+"Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's."
+
+So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+
+"When do your folks eat supper?" inquired Lin.
+
+"Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on."
+
+"How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?"
+Lin asked.
+
+"What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day," said
+the lady.
+
+"Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+colonel's table," Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. "That
+is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
+know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'."
+
+"You're the teasingest man--" said Miss Stone, pouting. "I might have
+knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked."
+
+"Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+out to-night."
+
+"Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!" and Sabina giggled.
+
+A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+
+"Something like them partridges used to," said Lin, musingly.
+
+"Partridges?" inquired Sabina.
+
+"Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are
+gone by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess."
+
+Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+
+"We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times," said Lin, his
+wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+advantage.
+
+"I expect you used to dance a lot," remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+
+"Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?"
+
+Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+
+"Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?" she inquired next.
+
+"Why, sure," said Lin, waking for a moment; "but I like your color best.
+A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's."
+
+"Indeed, I don't think so!" exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant
+to perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+
+"Never?" said he. "It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water.
+It's different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in
+July--around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the
+islands. I've swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to
+board in Boston." He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm.
+Suddenly all dreaminess left him.
+
+"I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?" he
+said.
+
+Miss Stone was at a loss.
+
+"I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston."
+
+Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the
+post and her.
+
+"I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?" said she.
+
+"I ain't got no folks," replied Lin, "barring a brother. I expect he is
+taking good care of himself."
+
+"Don't you correspond?"
+
+"Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+nothin'."
+
+Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
+rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she
+noticed him step to his own.
+
+"Why, I didn't know you were lame!" cried she.
+
+"Shucks!" said Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on
+his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
+measure of his activity.
+
+"That's how," said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. "No,"
+Lin continued, "Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have
+a look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good
+enough for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot
+of years now. Whoop ye!" he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter
+at a jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+
+Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
+took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and
+found the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering
+dish of fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself
+that inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed
+Duxbury clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that
+she found others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and
+fifty miles from the railway, and men there were many and girls were
+few.
+
+The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with
+resignation, knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them.
+Lin climbed up beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+
+"Don't get full, Lin," said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+store.
+
+"My plans ain't settled that far yet," replied Mr. McLean.
+
+"Leave it out of them," said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
+the stage.
+
+It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
+the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
+Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
+pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
+over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+
+"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.
+
+"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a
+month, I guess."
+
+He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
+during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
+sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you
+were? But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the
+bottom of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided
+it was a suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them
+to change their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and
+unharness. Then they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace
+was spliced with rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground,
+the bishop proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles.
+They crossed through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines,
+and, reaching Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That
+afternoon the stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform
+at Green River; this was the route in those days before the mid-winter
+catastrophes of frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was
+going west. His robes had passed him on the up stage during the night.
+When the reverend gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short
+moment, and then laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+
+"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but
+I can't, you see. Not even at this."
+
+The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+
+"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the bishop, giving his hand
+to Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting
+full' out of your plans?"
+
+Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he
+said. "I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added.
+
+"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
+in the same place."
+
+He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He
+walked up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright
+lights of the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way
+piano-music sounded through one of the many open doors.
+
+"Wonder if the professor's there yet?" said Lin, and he went across the
+railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into
+the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin
+did not join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a
+dealer and a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were
+painted sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares.
+The legend "Jacks pay" was also clearly painted. The player placed chips
+on whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards
+(quite fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton
+case made with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of
+chips rose high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was
+lessened by one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had
+much better have joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of
+the dealer met the eye of the player. After that slight incident the
+player's chip pile began to rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer
+made admiring comments on such a run of luck. Then the player stopped,
+cashed in, and said good-night, having nearly doubled the number of his
+gold pieces.
+
+"Five dollars' worth," said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings
+of fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then,
+singularly enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars
+behind the game.
+
+"I guess I'll leave the train go without me," said Lin, buying five
+dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+
+During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised
+and sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin
+lost--just as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of
+eyes early in the evening.
+
+When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was
+all back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with
+his hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his
+fingers came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by
+this hour must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+
+"I'm following it, you bet," he declared, kicking the rail. "Not yet
+though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+Boston." He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked
+freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. "And I guess Boston'll
+have to get along without me for a spell, too," continued Lin. "A man
+don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin'
+with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that
+hog chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank,
+he'd say to me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit
+o' clothes and--no, sir, you bet!"
+
+Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly
+down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals,
+the great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its
+locomotive moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed
+steaming to its place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted,
+heavily bumping and parting.
+
+"Hello, Lin!" A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+
+"Hello!" responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+
+"They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it." Honey
+offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+
+"Bruck my leg," corrected Lin, "if that's what they meant."
+
+"I expect that's it," said Honey. "You've had no other trouble?"
+
+"Been boomin'," said Lin.
+
+From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+
+"Wher're yu' bound?" inquired Honey.
+
+"East," said Lin.
+
+"Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west."
+
+"That just suits me," said Lin.
+
+The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that
+wall Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents
+freshly through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from
+locomotive to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion
+and slowly rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and
+the bells of the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose
+great dull-red cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union
+Pacific locomotives sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like
+ships at sea.
+
+Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between,
+as their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding.
+Mutual whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+
+"What are yu' doing at present?" Lin inquired.
+
+"Prospectin'."
+
+Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy
+Lin. To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk
+of his friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He
+saw himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down
+a bag of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand
+him in exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded
+over, and heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue
+water that twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk
+check. He had his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country
+to him, his eye fell casually upon a mile-post: "Omaha, 876." He began
+to watch for them:--877, 878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+
+"What are yu' laughin' about?" asked Honey.
+
+"Oh, the wheels."
+
+"Wheels?"
+
+"Don't yu' hear 'em?" said Lin. "'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'.
+'Variety, variety.'"
+
+"Huh!" said Honey, with scorn. "'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it."
+
+"You're no poet," observed Mr. McLean.
+
+As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of
+the window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+sulkily, "Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
+yu' in Evanston?" And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
+friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+
+By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends,
+forgot prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed
+north In Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose,
+and came to Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek.
+Here the berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and
+the bears in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually
+with the season, making variety in the otherwise even life of the
+prospectors. It was now August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making
+mud-pies for sixty days. But the philosopher's stone was not in the wash
+at that placer, nor did Lin gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the
+nail of his thumb. Then they heard of an excitement at Obo, Nevada, and,
+hurrying to Obo, they made some more mud-pies.
+
+Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, "Lin,
+wher're yu' goin'?"
+
+And Lin always replied, "East." This became a signal for drinks.
+
+For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights
+of untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with
+falling waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation
+presides over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof
+of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The
+mean ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot
+of mange. No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry,
+unimportant ugliness.
+
+There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting
+of the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable.
+Now and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about
+and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water.
+Passing each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned
+pair of overalls the same label, "Levi Strauss, No. 2," with a picture
+of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly
+struggling to split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label
+just like that too, and when he considered all things he laughed to
+himself. Then, having stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would
+return to his ditch. As autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy
+gravel they were sunk in. He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his
+boots, and hated Obo, Nevada. But he held himself ready to say "East"
+whenever he saw Honey coming along with the bottle. The cold weather
+put an end to this adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow,
+through which the sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the
+two friends drifted southward.
+
+Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the
+dirt. It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze.
+But this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than
+Nevada. Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them
+found a little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite
+froze one day.
+
+"We're seein' the country, anyway," said Honey.
+
+"Seein' hell," said Lin, "and there's more of it above ground than I
+thought."
+
+"What'll we do?" Honey inquired.
+
+"Have to walk for a job--a good-payin' job," responded the hopeful
+cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+
+Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the
+simpler prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in
+Boston between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this
+qualification, the apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa,
+and liked him. Lin made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of;
+and, as the mild weather began, he materially increased the apothecary's
+business by persuading him to send East for a soda-water fountain. The
+ladies of the town clustered around this entertaining novelty, and while
+sipping vanilla and lemon bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of
+the town discovered that whiskey with soda and strawberry syrup was
+delicious, and produced just as competent effects. A group of them were
+generally standing in the shop and shaking dice to decide who should
+pay for the next, while Lin administered to each glass the necessary
+ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a little more steadily than
+had been its wont, and he divided with the penniless Honey.
+
+But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the
+new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his
+feet, was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the
+dance-hall at the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next
+day but one.
+
+The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had
+white eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you
+spoke pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried
+to beat your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what
+made him so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and
+every gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get
+up a race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon
+opened a bank account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a
+silver-inlaid one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle
+richly stamped. Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the
+drug-store and inquire, "Lin, wher're yu' goin'?"
+
+But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water
+fountain with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season
+of fine sand and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung
+heavily over man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling
+with joy; the little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and
+shrank to a succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus
+bloomed everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the
+sand. There were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste
+very good; but if you drank from the standing pools where the river
+had been, you repaired to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of
+wandering players came dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa,
+played a brass-band up and down the street, and announced the powerful
+drama of "East Lynne." Then Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that
+lie between there and Chelsea, and of the sea that must look so cool.
+He forgot them while following the painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel;
+but, going to bed in the back part of the drug-store, he remembered how
+he used to beat everybody swimming in the salt water.
+
+"I'm goin'," he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+inspected his bank account. "I'm sure goin'," he repeated, blowing the
+light out, "and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!" for he had
+often thought of the bishop's story. "You bet!" he remarked once more in
+a muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+
+"I'd pull out with yer," he said, "only I can do business round Yuma and
+westward with the pinto."
+
+For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and
+was in his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through
+Denver to Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for
+some months. Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a
+buffalo coat for his brother--something scarce to see in these days.
+
+"Frank'll have to get along without it," he observed, philosophically,
+and took the next eastbound train.
+
+If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft,
+gray hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not
+the majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa,
+with its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a
+little more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are
+not understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn
+at Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of
+there was east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important
+stopping-place. In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and
+silence prevailed throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston
+without change. Had not home memories begun impetuously to flood
+his mind, he would have felt himself conspicuous. Town clothes and
+conventions had their due value with him. But just now the boy's
+single-hearted thoughts were far from any surroundings, and he was
+murmuring to himself, "To-morrow! tomorrow night!"
+
+There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin
+for thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached
+the next day one or two of them commented that he was the most
+attractive-looking man they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness,
+and wide-open, jocular eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly
+conscientious wild animal, there was nothing remarkable about young
+Lin except stage effect. The conductor had been annoyed to have such
+a passenger; but the cow-puncher troubled no one, and was extremely
+silent. So evidently was he a piece of the true frontier that curious
+and hopeful fellow-passengers, after watching him with diversion, more
+than once took a seat next to him. He met their chatty inquiries with
+monosyllables so few and so unprofitable in their quiet politeness that
+the passengers soon gave him up. At Springfield he sent a telegram to
+his brother at the great dry-goods establishment that employed him.
+
+The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung
+by hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off
+and his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long
+after, Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods
+used to be above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton.
+"Faneuil's next," he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten
+home-knowledge shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated
+near said, "Beg pardon?" but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious
+Lin, with his forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed
+into sight, and soon after they were running in the darkness between
+high walls; but the cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be
+seen. When the porter announced "Boston," he started up and followed
+like a sheep in the general exodus. Down on the platform he moved along
+with the slow crowd till some one touched him, and, wheeling round, he
+seized both his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.
+
+There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce
+civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted
+resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by;
+and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and
+smiled gently to herself.
+
+But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had
+risen with his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the
+paying-tellers of banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at
+the Parker House was president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal
+the cow-puncher to these shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would
+not stay very long. Of course he was glad to see him again, and he would
+take him to dine at some obscure place this first evening. But this was
+not Lin's plan. Frank must dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank
+demurred, saying it was he that should be host.
+
+"And," he added, "they charge up high for wines at Parker's." Then for
+the twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+
+"You're goin' to take your grub with me," said Lin. "That's all right, I
+guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like
+as if father was livin'--(his voice softened)--and here to see me come
+home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can
+yu' spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off
+with steamed Duxbury clams." The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where
+the coin made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, "I suppose
+Swampscott's there yet?"
+
+"Yes," said Frank. "It's a dead little town, is Swampscott."
+
+"I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow," Lin pursued.
+
+"Oh, that's been pulled down since--I forget the year they improved that
+block."
+
+Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+first and last home they had ever had.
+
+"Seventy-nine is when it was," continued Frank. "So you can save the
+trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott."
+
+"I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway," said the cow-puncher in his
+offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+
+They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+surveyed the younger's appearance.
+
+But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+"After to-morrow," said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder,
+"yu' can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu'
+pretty close, Frank."
+
+Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+the stress became too great. "Lin," said he, "while you're running with
+our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know."
+
+It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+
+The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+shoulder. "You've made it plain," he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+eyes down into Frank's. "You've explained yourself fairly well. Run
+along with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round
+and causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these
+things at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu'
+need to. I guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu'
+see me around on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable
+to close your jaw up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that
+to your crowd than you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got
+for a brother."
+
+Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences
+had occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked
+him on his glumness.
+
+Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the
+bright, hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the
+graveyard he saw a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel,
+weeping.
+
+"There ain't nobody to do that for this one," thought the cow-puncher,
+and looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at
+the woman.
+
+She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief
+was shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place
+goodbye. So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless
+past. When she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter
+from the street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly
+lump of flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in
+Swampscott. He spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but
+her act of kneeling he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some
+hours he hung about the little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the
+salt water where he used to swim.
+
+"Yu' don't belong any more, Lin," he miserably said at length, and took
+his way to Boston.
+
+The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly
+gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and
+a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a
+ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed
+to numb his good humor.
+
+When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs
+of approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization
+was utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and,
+galloping among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner
+took on that alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As
+the stage took him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty
+miles or so, shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual
+tones, "Hello, Lin, where've you been at?"
+
+At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+was hearty.
+
+"It took a week for my robes to catch up with me," he said, laughing.
+Then, in a little while, "How was the East?"
+
+"First-rate," said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+reverting--at any rate, just now--to their last talk at Green River, and
+the advice he had then given.
+
+"I trust your friends were all well?" he said.
+
+"I guess they was healthy enough," said Lin.
+
+"I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city."
+
+"Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect," Lin replied.
+
+The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had
+no notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+
+"Mr. Bishop," the cow-puncher said, "how was that about that fellow you
+told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks,
+and they--well there was his father saw him comin'"--He stopped,
+embarrassed.
+
+Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed
+them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just
+now, what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man
+gravely.
+
+"Have yu' got a Bible?" pursued Lin. "For, excuse me, but I'd like yu'
+to read that onced."
+
+So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time
+at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone
+so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes
+from the bishop's face.
+
+"How long has that there been wrote?" he asked.
+
+He was told about how long.
+
+"Mr. Bishop," said Lin, "I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry,
+down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen
+a man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the
+elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!"
+
+"Well," said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles,
+"I am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been
+finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived."
+
+Lin meditated. "I guess that could be," he said. "Yes; after that yu've
+been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till
+lately, I guess that could be."
+
+Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he
+was delivering the fulness of his heart to. "And come to think," he
+concluded, "it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
+big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
+sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and
+it'll not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in
+a stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
+here" (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), "seein' it
+onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.
+Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River."
+
+The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away
+from Lin. Knowing his man--for had he not seen many of this kind in his
+desert diocese?--he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the
+cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should
+now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would
+join it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River
+country. More business was over there, and better chances for a man to
+take up some land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort
+Washakie, the bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned
+several leaves down, carefully avoiding any page that related of
+miracles.
+
+"You need not read it through, you know," he said, smiling; "just
+read where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts.
+Goodbye--and always come and see me."
+
+The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards
+Wind River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving
+dot went over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the
+parade-ground, thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly
+soul, he shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+
+It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news.
+Meeting him to-day had been unforeseen--unforeseen and so pleasant that
+the thing had never come into my head until just now, after both of us
+had talked and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+
+I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's
+approach to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come
+precipitately out of the door.
+
+"I'm turruble pleased to see yu'," he had said, immediately.
+
+"What's happened?" said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+
+And he piteously explained: "Why, I've been here all alone since
+yesterday!"
+
+This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+
+Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock
+to him?
+
+"As to that," replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, "when a man expects
+lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course.
+But when he has figured on finding company--say--" he broke off (and
+vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)--"when you're lucky enough to
+catch yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to
+yourself for hours.--You've not seen anything of Tommy?" he pursued with
+interest.
+
+I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over
+here with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the
+week's mail for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man
+to do but sit and sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could
+have endured that, but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and
+gone to Buffalo. It was circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered
+the money there must be in the circus business? Tommy had taken the
+outgoing letters early yesterday. Nobody had kept him waiting. By all
+rules he should have been back again last night. Maybe the stage was
+late reaching Powder River, and Tommy had had to lay over for it.
+Well, that would justify him. Far more likely he had gone to the circus
+himself and taken the mail with him. Tommy was no type of man for
+postmaster. Except drawing the allowance his mother in the East gave
+him first of every month, he had never shown punctuality that Lin could
+remember. Never had any second thoughts, and awful few first ones. Told
+bigger lies than a small man ought, also.
+
+"Has successes, though," said I, wickedly.
+
+"Huh!" went on Mr. McLean. "Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+she"--Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive--"why, even that
+girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant
+he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of 'em
+retains interest in Tommy."
+
+Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was
+glad to see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of
+Pitchstone Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad
+care of himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft
+in general. He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East
+by a route of his own discovering--and from his account of that journey
+it had proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the
+years of our friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the
+body he had always richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a
+season's absence and spoke those invariable words which all old friends
+upon this earth use to each other at meeting--"You haven't changed, you
+haven't changed at all!"--I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's
+boy soul. And so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the
+nature of Tommy (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him
+and took an intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I
+was than he, after all.
+
+There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved,
+and on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+firewood.
+
+"Look at those sorrowful toothpicks," said he: "Tommy's work."
+
+So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse
+way on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+yet.
+
+"It's good yu' come this forenoon," Lin said to me. "I'd not have had
+the heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!"
+
+Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened
+a number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+the stew.
+
+"Tommy'll be hot about these," said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs.
+"He don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods--pickled salmon and
+truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he
+showed me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he;
+'too bad my damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on
+me ever since Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail.
+'You swore too heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may
+have travelled half a mile by the time I'd found four nests."
+
+I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly--and in Wyoming they were
+always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and
+I enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite
+established in my own soul at that time--and perhaps that is the reason
+why it is the only time I have ever known which I would live over again,
+those years when people said, "You are old enough to know better"--and
+one didn't care!
+
+Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+
+"What do you think of--" I began, and stopped.
+
+I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of
+digestion. I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it
+occurred to me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before
+this, had he known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began
+differently.
+
+"What is the most important event that can happen in this country?" said
+I.
+
+Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his
+back, dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one
+limp, open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over
+him.
+
+"I want to know what you consider the most important event that can
+happen in this country," said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+clearness.
+
+The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth
+that I recognized to be meant for the word "War." Then he rolled over so
+that his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+
+"I don't mean country in the sense of United States," said I. "I mean
+this country here, and Bear Creek, and--well, the ranches southward for
+fifty miles, say. Important to this section."
+
+"Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks," said Lin. "Yu' might leave
+a man rest till then."
+
+"I want your opinion," said I.
+
+"Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers."
+
+"No."
+
+"Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion," said Lin. "Seems like yu' merely
+figure on givin' me yours."
+
+"Very well," said I. "Very well, then."
+
+I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for
+some minutes now.
+
+"I expect a railroad would be more important," said Mr. McLean,
+persuasively, from the floor.
+
+"Than a rise in steers?" said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. "Oh
+yes. Yes, a railroad certainly would."
+
+"It's got to be money, anyhow," stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. "Money
+in some shape."
+
+"How little you understand the real wants of the country!" said I,
+coming to the point. "It's a girl."
+
+Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+
+"A girl," I repeated. "A new girl coming to this starved country."
+
+The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. "Well,"
+said he, "yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
+with dinner and sleep." He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
+expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
+entertainment, and palls. "Starved," he presently muttered. "We are kind
+o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
+mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
+she is!" he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at
+me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. "Sidney, Nebraska."
+
+I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her
+name--but his geography of her was accurate.
+
+One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+received a letter--no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all
+see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me.
+The letter was signed,
+
+"Ever your afectionite frend.
+
+                           "Katie Peck,"
+
+and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should
+like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. "Like to come and be
+like old times" filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers
+with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on
+Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she
+does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned,
+and old girls had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss
+Molly Wood (the Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in
+order the cabin and the children of the Taylors, while they were gone
+forty-five miles to the stage station to meet their guest.
+
+"Well," said Lin, judicially, "Miss Wood is a lady."
+
+"Yes," said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+
+Lin thoughtfully continued. "She is--she's--she's--what are you laughin'
+at?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to,
+do you?"
+
+"Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed
+better, I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like
+gettin' kissed against their wishes--and you know it."
+
+"But the point would rather seem to be that she--"
+
+"Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or
+I'll--I'll talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard
+me do yet."
+
+"Impossible!" I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+
+"As to point--that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+right." He ruminated for a moment. "She has about scared all the boys
+off, though," he continued. "And that's what you get by being refined,"
+he concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+
+"She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice," said I. "He
+was there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk
+Creek. Didn't seem particularly frightened."
+
+"Oh, well, nothin' alarms him--not even refinement," said Mr. McLean,
+with his grin. "And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+would us poor punchers do?"
+
+"You have me cornered," said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence,
+Lin on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon
+a scene my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring
+had passed over it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels
+undulated in emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this
+moment of to-day was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the
+dimples of the foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun
+melted among them. Around the doubling of the creek in the willow
+thickets glimmered skeined veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The
+stream poured turbulently away from the snows of the mountains behind
+us. It went winding in many folds across the meadows into distance
+and smallness, and so vanished round the great red battlement of wall
+beyond. Upon this were falling the deep hues of afternoon--violet, rose,
+and saffron, swimming and meeting as if some prism had dissolved and
+flowed over the turrets and crevices of the sandstone. Far over there I
+saw a dot move.
+
+"At last!" said I.
+
+Lin looked out of the window. "It's more than Tommy," said he, at
+once; and his eyes made it out before mine could. "It's a wagon. That's
+Tommy's bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish," Lin
+severely commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least
+be a homestretch.
+
+Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+best understood by cows--"Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!" But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets
+are worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can
+produce these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such
+sounds ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when
+the last cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already
+befallen) the yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle
+appeared to appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that
+was plain even at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch,
+after all. The bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned
+beside the wagon.
+
+"Showin' off," remarked Lin. "Tommy's showin' off." Suspicion crossed
+his face, and then certainty. "Why, we might have knowed that!" he
+exclaimed, in dudgeon. "It's her." He hastened outside for a better
+look, and I came to the door myself. "That's what it is," said he. "It's
+the girl. Oh yes. That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for.
+She come by the stage all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been
+too tired to travel, yu' see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his
+buckskins--they're four-year-olds. Or else--anyway, they laid over last
+night at Powder River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu'
+see, holdin' the mail back on us twenty-four hours--and that's your
+postmaster!"
+
+It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new
+girl, I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+
+Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade
+drew near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention
+focused upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear
+made a cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly
+chirruped to his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For
+Tommy wore upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in
+the Wild West. Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might
+have conducted a show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person
+before the eyes of princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake
+skin for a hat-band, he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of
+buckskin, and concluded with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there
+were things between his shirt and his heels, but all leather and deadly
+weapons. He had also a riata, a cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently
+employed these Spanish names for the objects. I wish that I had not lost
+Tommy's photograph in Rocky Mountain costume. You must understand that
+he was really pretty, with blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a graceful
+figure; and, besides, he had twenty-four hours' start of poor dusty Lin,
+whose best clothes were elsewhere.
+
+You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present
+us to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook
+the office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. "Good friends
+of mine, and gentlemen, both," said he to Miss Peck; and to us, "A lady
+whose acquaintance will prove a treat to our section."
+
+We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its
+being a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+
+"Well," she exclaimed to Tommy, "I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+eggs you've spoke so much about."
+
+I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+merely to exclaim, "Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been
+laying since Christmas!" and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy
+try to find all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore
+embarrassment to the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels
+of the wagon. He looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his
+features assumed a rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+
+"Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em."
+
+"Well, if that ain't!" cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin
+as he now assisted her to descend.
+
+"All?" faltered Tommy. "Not the four nests?"
+
+"I've had three meals, yu' know," Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+
+"I helped him," said I. "Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+ham. Forgive us, please."
+
+"I declare!" said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+eyes upon me. "You're a case, too, I expect."
+
+But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot.
+In her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned
+back to Lin McLean. "You carry that," said she, and gave the pleased
+cow-puncher a hand valise.
+
+"I'll look after your things, Miss Peck," called Tommy, now springing
+down from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+
+"You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!" said the lady,
+but favoring him with a look from her large eyes. "There's plenty of
+gentlemen here." With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the
+cabin, he following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear.
+"Well, I guess I'm about collapsed!" said she, vigorously, and sank upon
+one of Tommy's chairs.
+
+The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought
+a basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have
+done something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone
+to the stable with the horses.
+
+"Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?" inquired Mrs.
+Taylor.
+
+"Not now," her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such
+a quick look at me.
+
+"We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine," said Lin, gallantly. "Our
+climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead."
+
+"You're a case, anyway!" exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+
+The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and,
+throwing one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with
+cheerful talk. She steadily watched him--his face sometimes, sometimes
+his lounging, masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to
+her, Taylor departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor,
+busy with supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at
+having her old friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+
+"Sickness has changed poor Katie some," said she. "But I'm hoping she'll
+get back her looks on Bear Creek."
+
+"She seems less feeble than I had understood," I remarked.
+
+"Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired
+and down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But
+Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day
+she's real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends."
+
+"How long will she stay?" I inquired.
+
+"Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as
+Taylor knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February,
+for you always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times.
+Katie'll be most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was
+sixteen the very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got
+some good man for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance,
+for there was a big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real
+scandalous, getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely
+at all. And so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the
+railroad eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with
+feeding them big trains day and night."
+
+"A biscuit-shooter!" said I.
+
+Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. "Well," said she then,
+"I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+stations."
+
+I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+
+If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for,
+and will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you
+sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You
+discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through
+doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in
+a room of tables and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing
+attention, a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began
+immediately a swift chant. It hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow.
+In this inexpressible ceremony the name of every dish went hurtling into
+the next, telescoped to shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your
+Amazon in the middle, it dislocated her, and she merely went back and
+took a fresh start. The chant was always the same, but you never learned
+it. As soon as it began, your mind snapped shut like the upper berth
+in a Pullman. You must have uttered appropriate words--even a parrot
+will--for next you were eating things--pie, ham, hot cakes--as fast as
+you could. Twenty minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with
+your pile-driven stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is
+not dieted with greater velocity, and "biscuit-shooter" is a grand word.
+Very likely some Homer of the railroad yards first said it--for what
+men upon the present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we
+Americans?
+
+If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding
+in response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her
+into convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but
+allowed the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly
+now and then, "I declare!" and "If you ain't!" Lin was most certainly
+engaging, if that was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled
+upon her, and he half closed them now and then to look at her more
+effectively. I suppose she was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say
+that she was handsome in a large California-fruit style. They made a
+good-looking pair of animals. But it was in the presence of Tommy that
+Master Lin shone more energetically than ever, and under such shining
+Tommy was transparently restless. He tried, and failed, to bring
+the conversation his way, and took to rearranging the mail and the
+furniture.
+
+"Supper's ready," he said, at length. "Come right in, Miss Peck; right
+in here. This is your seat--this one, please. Now you can see my fields
+out of the window."
+
+"You sit here," said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was
+between them. "Them's elegant!" she presently exclaimed to Tommy. "Did
+you cook 'em?"
+
+I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+
+"Indeed!" said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of
+his ranch, his potatoes, his horses. "And do you punch cattle, too?" she
+inquired of him.
+
+"Me?" said Tommy, slightingly; "gave it up years ago; too empty a
+life for me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own
+property"--Tommy swept his hand at the whole landscape--"he takes to
+more intellectual work."
+
+"Lickin' postage-stamps," Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+
+"You lick them and I cancel them," answered the postmaster; and it does
+not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+
+"That's one on you," she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she
+went for a little walk.
+
+"Katie was ever a tease," said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. "She'll get
+used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,"
+said he.
+
+Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was
+only when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men
+choosing various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a
+while. We lay in the blank--we had spread on some soft, dry sand in
+preference to the stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the
+contemplative influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+
+"Ever notice," said he, "how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?"
+
+I did not feel sure that I had.
+
+"Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get
+to require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick."
+
+I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+on.
+
+"Ever notice," said he, "how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+get to increasing the dose?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Him roping six bears!" pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+"Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter
+other men'll get? Why's that, now?"
+
+I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+
+"Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they--"
+
+Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I
+sank beyond his reach.
+
+In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at
+the drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the
+daytime there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and
+hearing the news. There I heard how things were going everywhere,
+including Bear Creek.
+
+All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was
+a great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than
+the school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and
+showed it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town
+buying presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for
+a necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him.
+Too bad Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only
+yesterday to get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big
+joke on Lin McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew
+the location of, and Tommy got the bear.
+
+Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They
+had been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was
+in visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering
+and branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in
+camp. Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely
+watching Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way
+quite so much.
+
+"Lin," said the Southerner, "I reckon you're failin'."
+
+Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+
+"A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants," pursued the Virginian.
+The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+young pride.
+
+"And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food," his ingenious friend
+continued, slowly and gently.
+
+"I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name," said Lin.
+
+"It ain't sca'cely hon'able," went on the Virginian, "to waste away
+durin' the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If
+he is paid to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge
+or pull away."
+
+"It's not many dodge my rope," boasted Lin, imprudently.
+
+"Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her."
+
+Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. "I'll
+improve," said he, "if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so
+handy. Has she promised to be your sister yet?" he added.
+
+"Is that what they do?" inquired the Virginian, serenely. "I have never
+got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!"
+
+And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+
+But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory
+is to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted
+than most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he
+chose.
+
+"Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors'," he now told the
+camp. "He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General
+Miles, and General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in
+conversation, and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck
+appeared interested in his statements."
+
+"What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?" demanded Lin.
+
+"Visitin' Miss Wood," answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. "You'd ought to
+write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is
+gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and
+you would have the runnin' all to yourself."
+
+"I'll fix him yet," muttered Mr. McLean. "Him and his wars."
+
+With that he rose and left us.
+
+The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was
+puzzled. Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman
+had been a transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty
+romances, where the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and
+moved on. Nor had his affairs been of the sort to teach a young man
+respect. I am putting it rather mildly.
+
+For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after
+that began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was
+a serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A
+man was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some
+day and found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No
+interest, no surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty
+owed him fifty dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the
+round-up, and he, Lin, would get his time and rustle altogether some
+five hundred dollars. Then there was his homestead claim on Box Elder,
+and the surveyors were coming in this fall. No better location for a
+home in this country than Box Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it
+needed was a house and ditches and buildings and fences, and to be
+planted with crops. Such chances and considerations should sober a
+man and make him careful what he did. "I'd take in Cheyenne on our
+wedding-trip, and after that I'd settle right down to improving Box
+Elder," concluded Mr. McLean, suddenly.
+
+His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not
+remotely imagined such a step.
+
+"Marry her!" I screeched in dismay. "Marry her!"
+
+I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but
+I emphasized both thoroughly.
+
+"I didn't expect yu'd act that way," said the lover. He dropped behind
+me fifty yards and spoke no more.
+
+Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+
+But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry
+or wounded--resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as
+of his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for
+a while how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon
+abandoned the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+
+"Lin," I began, slowing my horse, "you must not think about what I
+said."
+
+"I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects," said he, and slowed his own
+horse.
+
+"Oh, look here!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Well?" said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+
+"Astonishment makes a man say anything," I proceeded. "And I'll say
+again you're too good for her--and I'll say I don't generally believe in
+the wife being older than the husband."
+
+"What's two years?" said Lin.
+
+I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation
+of the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+estimate her own age.
+
+"She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month," said Lin, with
+sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. "I promised her
+a bear-skin."
+
+"Yes," said I, "I heard about that in Buffalo."
+
+Lin's face grew dusky with anger. "No doubt yu' heard about it," said
+he. "I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told
+the truth to any of 'em--but her." He looked at me with a certain
+hesitation. "I think I will," he continued. "I don't mind tellin' you."
+
+He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+of rope that hung on his saddle.
+
+"She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come
+home though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to
+see what she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start
+whining, and she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and
+lifts up a cub and holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a
+person. And she rubbed her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped
+her, and she cuffed the cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away
+they starts rolling all three of 'em! I watched that for a long while.
+That big thing just nursed and played with them little cubs, beatin' em
+for a change onced in a while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd
+sit up solemn and look all around so life-like that I near busted. Why,
+how was I goin' to spoil that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for
+I'd have hated to have Mrs. Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She
+claimed I was scared to shoot."
+
+"After you had told her why it was?" said I.
+
+"Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has
+the skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+Tommy."
+
+"But since she has taken you?" said I.
+
+"She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy."
+
+I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand
+also the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these
+differed from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand
+was why Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque,
+a career in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a
+present lacking context--indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy
+would win!
+
+"Lin," said I, "I'm backing him."
+
+"Back away!" said he. "Tommy can please a woman--him and his blue
+eyes--but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better
+than he knows about killin' Injuns."
+
+"Did you hear about the Crows?" said I.
+
+"About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+believed any Crows--" he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+
+"What's the matter now?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing." He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+extent. "What made yu' say that to me?" he asked, presently.
+
+"Say what?"
+
+"About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!"
+
+"Colts ought not to marry," said I.
+
+"Sure!" said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the
+Virginian's black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next
+the Taylors' that Lin changed the lively course of thought that was
+evidently filling his mind.
+
+"Tell yu'," said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to
+the black horse, "for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the
+same. She likes him dangling round her so earnest--him that no body ever
+saw dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does
+he get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the
+Miss Woods of this world," he added, defiantly--"except at long range."
+
+At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her--whether
+the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company;
+whatever had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair
+looked curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and
+her cheeks were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood
+talking sweetly to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was
+no doubt that he had been "raised good enough" to appreciate her, no
+matter what had been his raising!
+
+Lin greeted every one jauntily. "How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+Tommy?" said he. "Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path."
+
+"I declare!" said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and
+then he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, "I hadn't been goin'
+to mention it to the ladies until it was right sure."
+
+"You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck," said Tommy. "There's lots of men
+here."
+
+"Who's afraid?" said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+"Oh," said Lin, "maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh."
+
+"Of course," said Tommy.
+
+"Hello, Tommy!" called Taylor from the lane. "Your horse has broke his
+rein and run down the field."
+
+Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+
+"I must be cooking supper now," said Katie, shortly.
+
+"I'll stir for yu'," said Lin, grinning at her.
+
+"Come along then," said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+
+Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+Virginian, and she looked at me.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+wasn't new any more it might become dull!"
+
+"Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either," said I.
+
+Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. "But mightn't it become
+just--just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very--determined,
+you know?"
+
+"Only one is determined," said the Virginian
+
+Molly looked inquiring.
+
+"Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to."
+
+"Dear me, what a notion!"
+
+"No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy--well, Tommy is considered harmless, ma'am.
+A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never let
+Tommy get ahaid of him that way."
+
+"It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!" exclaimed Molly.
+
+"Why, ma'am," said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+"where is any countin' without some love?"
+
+"Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?"
+
+"I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference
+between thinkin' and feelin', ma'am."
+
+I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her
+cheeks. But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+
+"You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+the jiste!"
+
+"All cow-punchers--" I attempted to resume.
+
+"Quit now, Lin McLean," shouted the voice, "or I'll put yus through that
+window, and it shut."
+
+"Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face.
+And now I'm going to quit and cough back."
+
+"Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?" inquired the Virginian
+as Molly rose. "You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh."
+
+"Why, yes," said Molly, blithely. "And you'll come?" she added to me.
+
+But I was on the Virginian's side. "I must look after my horse," said I,
+and went down to the corral.
+
+Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon.
+The canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where
+I walked the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where
+the thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across
+the silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he
+and General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when
+supper-time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account
+to Mrs. Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he
+was saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+
+"But when you get old?" said she.
+
+"We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am," said he, simply.
+"But I have a reason, and I am saving."
+
+"Give me the flowers," said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on
+the table as Lin came hurrying out.
+
+"I've told her," said he to the Southerner and me, "that I've asked her
+twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you." He took the
+Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I
+began to discern something quite definite at supper.
+
+"Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this," he
+said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+
+"Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?" said the Virginian.
+
+"Chap come into the round-up this afternoon," said Lin. "But he was
+rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square."
+
+"Of course they wouldn't," said Tommy, haughtily.
+
+"Oh, there's nothing in it," said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+
+"Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?"
+
+Mrs. Taylor had not.
+
+"Lin," said the Virginian, "did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?"
+
+"You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in
+the mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good--not in her class o'
+sports, smugglin' and such."
+
+"I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption," said the
+Virginian.
+
+"Talking of mountains," said Tommy, "this range here used to be a great
+place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the
+red sons-of-guns."
+
+"You bet," said Lin. "Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+and quit him, too?"
+
+"I reckon," replied the Virginian, "that the bull-fighter wore better."
+
+"Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin'," said Lin. "My! but I'd like
+to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened."
+
+The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made
+of the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that
+Tommy had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his
+campaigns. But when the hour came for those visitors who were not
+spending the night to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me,
+and I noticed the Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed
+diversion.
+
+"Don't seem to make anything of it," whispered Taylor to Tommy, "but the
+ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck."
+
+"Why, I'll just explain--" began Tommy.
+
+"Don't," whispered Lin, joining us. "Yu' know how women are. Once they
+take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+him and me" (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) "must go back to
+camp, for we're on second relief."
+
+"And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+house," said Taylor.
+
+"In that case," said Tommy, "I--"
+
+"Yu' see," said Lin, "they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+nights ago."
+
+"It ain't!" cried Tommy.
+
+"Why, of course it ain't," drawled the ingenious Lin. "But that's what I
+say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from
+our own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these
+nervous notions."
+
+"Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+Riverside," repeated Taylor, "but--"
+
+"But just kind of stay here," said Lin.
+
+"I will!" exclaimed Tommy. "Of course, I'm glad to oblige."
+
+I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than
+its results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He
+was to be kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they
+proposed to visit his empty cabin and play tricks--but that would be
+too childish, even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his
+occasional partner in mischief.
+
+"In spite of the Crows," I satirically told the ladies, "I shall sleep
+outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season."
+
+The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid
+a hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the
+galloping horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and
+crossed to her little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in
+that blessed country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+
+I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long,
+wild yell now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no
+pistol--nothing. In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought
+was "House! House!" and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to
+the cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I
+understood. I saw the Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw
+his teeth as he smiled. I hastened to my blankets, and returned more
+decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round
+the cabin, crazy with their youth. The door was opened, and Taylor
+courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He fired at the sky
+immediately.
+
+"B' gosh!" he roared. "That's one." He fired again. "Out and at 'em.
+They're running."
+
+At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots
+by the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted
+and joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about
+with them, helping the din.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Taylor!" said a voice. "I didn't think it of you." It was Molly
+Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+
+"Stop, friends!" said Taylor, gasping. "She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+I'd hate to have Bobbie--"
+
+"Speak to your papa," said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+
+"Well, I'll be gol-darned," said Taylor, surveying his costume, "if Lin
+McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!"
+
+"Where has Tommy got?" said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+"Didn't yus see him?" said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word
+in all this.
+
+We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+
+There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+
+"Well," murmured the Virginian to himself, "if I could have foresaw, I'd
+not--it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self."
+
+He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything,
+and presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent
+cabin, mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the
+night at Riverside, after all.
+
+Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+one when you think of it.
+
+I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian
+how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
+bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the
+peace. She was astride the horse he had brought for her.
+
+"Yes, he beat Tommy," said the Virginian. "Some folks, anyway, get what
+they want in this hyeh world."
+
+From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than
+Tommy.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+
+Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there
+was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this
+that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+fertility of the soil--when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+made--with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying
+to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+here--with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that
+anything could fly--with wings. Then we would lead such a man out and
+show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if he
+was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him
+the glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+meet him.
+
+"For purposes of amusement," he said, "I'll admit anything you claim
+for this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?"
+
+"You shall," I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+something to him "for purposes of amusement."
+
+"You fellows come up with me to my office," said the Governor. "I'll
+look at my mail, and show you round." So we went with him through the
+heat and sun.
+
+"What's that?" inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+
+"That is our park," said I. "Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi--" I checked
+myself.
+
+But Ogden said "with irrigation" for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+come.
+
+We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his
+letters over.
+
+"Here you are, Ogden," said he. "Here's the way we hump ahead out here."
+And he read us the following:
+
+                           "MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188--
+
+"Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+
+"Sir,--Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad
+to furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully
+in Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover,
+as I said, merely my necessary expenses--say $350 (three hundred and
+fifty dollars)--for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity of
+rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction
+of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+
+                           "I am, respectfully yours,
+
+                                "Robert Hilbrun"
+
+"Will the Legislature do it?" inquired Ogden in good faith.
+
+The Governor laughed boisterously. "I guess it wouldn't be
+constitutional," said he.
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Ogden.
+
+"My dear man," the Governor protested, "I know we're new, and our women
+vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would
+fly right into my back hair." Barker was also new as Governor.
+
+"Do you have Senators here too?" said Ogden, raising his eyebrows.
+"What do they look like? Are they females?" And the Governor grew more
+boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+men were certainly "out of sight". Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+
+"I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself," he said.
+
+"That's an idea!" cried the Governor. "Nothing unconstitutional about
+that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars--"
+
+"I'll put up a hundred," said Ogden, promptly. "I'm out for a Western
+vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen."
+
+The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help
+of some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised.
+"He won't care," said the Governor, "whether it's a private enterprise
+or a municipal step, so long as he gets his money."
+
+"He won't get it, I'm afraid," said Ogden. "But if he succeeds in
+tempting Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you
+call those people there on the horses?"
+
+We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and
+looking out over the plain toward Fort Russell. "That is a cow-puncher
+and his bride," I answered, recognizing the couple.
+
+"Real cow-puncher?"
+
+"Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean."
+
+"Real bride?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"She's riding straddle!" exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+glasses. "Why do you object to their union being holy?"
+
+I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+precipitately and against my advice.
+
+"I suppose he knew his business," observed Ogden.
+
+"That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her--and
+know him."
+
+Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at
+meeting with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked
+at her, and I instantly knew that Lin--the fool!--had confided to her my
+disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. McLean," said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his
+horse.
+
+"How're are yu', doctor," said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+at Drybone. "Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean," pursued the husband.
+
+The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to
+a Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at
+her, extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her
+big, dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+
+"I say," Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+flesh image, "I'm glad I came." The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man
+that wore them.
+
+"Well," said he, "I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in
+town? Circus come yet?"
+
+"No," said I. "Are you going to make a long stay?"
+
+The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. "Till
+we're tired of it, I guess," said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house
+lady, the biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty,
+irrepressible spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him,
+and now she was going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at
+her too, thoughtfully.
+
+"Say, Lin," I said, "if you stay here long enough you'll see a big
+show." And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I
+told him of the rain-maker.
+
+"Shucks!" said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+entertained at our venture. "Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me
+come in"; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised,
+he was hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+
+"Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess," spoke the
+image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I
+know that Lin did. The image continued: "Some folks and their money are
+soon parted"--she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I
+was sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable
+opinion of her--"but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged
+ap!" This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says
+the husband immediately started off on a run.
+
+At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+railroad ties, exclaiming: "Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+came."
+
+"That's who she is!" said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+once. "I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!"
+he continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated "Bigamy!" "Lots of
+them marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on
+to a new man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on--"
+
+"One moment, I beg," said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. "What does the
+law--"
+
+"Law?" said the Governor. "Look at that place!" He swept his hand
+towards the vast plains and the mountains. "Ninety-five thousand square
+miles of that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen
+yet on top of the Rocky Mountains."
+
+"I see," said the New-Yorker. "But--but--well let A and B represent
+first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does A know
+about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?"
+
+"Can't say," the Governor answered, jovially. "Can't generalize. Depends
+on heaps of things--love--money--Did you go to college? Well, let A
+minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared--"
+
+"Oh, come to lunch," I said. "Barker, do you really know the first
+husband is alive?"
+
+"Wasn't dead last winter." And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss
+Katie Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was
+wooed and won by a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder,
+a bar-tender, a freight hand, and was then hauling poles for the
+government. During his necessary absences from home she, too, went
+out-of-doors. This he often discovered, and would beat her, and she
+would then also beat him. After the beatings one of them would always
+leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in small-talk until
+Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. "Lusk," said the Governor,
+finishing his story, "cried around the saloons for a couple of days, and
+then went on hauling poles for the government, till at last he said
+he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was round
+Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars."
+
+"Well," I said, "none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay
+with Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+McLean."
+
+"You'll notice," said the Governor, "how she has got him under in three
+weeks. Old hand, you see."
+
+"Poor Lin!" I said.
+
+"Lucky, I call him," said the Governor. "He can quit her."
+
+"Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?"
+
+"She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn
+pretty quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip.
+Hello! here comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New
+York, Mr. Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden." The
+Governor's eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+
+"Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+acquaintance," said the signal-service officer.
+
+"Jode, when is it going to rain?" said the Governor, anxiously.
+
+Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He
+has the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in--I think
+he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton Manigault
+Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then, but his
+health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black; his
+face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a
+spout--the same narrow size all the way down--and his voice was as
+dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had
+constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with
+his dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted
+apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much
+satisfaction also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he
+came to see that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was
+published, and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen,
+along with other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and
+he passed his careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+
+He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina
+impressiveness. "There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing
+pressure," he said.
+
+"Well, that's what I thought," said the joyous Governor, "so I'm going
+to whoop her up."
+
+"What do you expect to whoop up, sir?"
+
+"Atmosphere, and all that," said the Governor. "Whole business has got
+to get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker."
+
+"Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir," said Jode, who enjoyed Barker
+as some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we
+had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter
+had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers
+with him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position.
+"Have your joke, sir," he said, waving a thin, clean hand, "but I
+decline to meet him."
+
+"Hilbrun?" said the Governor, staring.
+
+"If that's his name--yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and the
+Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow."
+
+"Glory!" said the Governor. "Well, I suppose not. I see your point,
+Jode. I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure.
+All very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow--too
+slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+does its business by is out of date."
+
+"I am quite serious, sir," said Jode. "And let me express my
+gratification that you do see my point." So we changed the subject.
+
+Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond
+those who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed
+curiosity about Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in
+the street that he was disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the
+enterprise. "But the boys would fly right at it and stay with it if the
+round-up was near town, you bet," said he.
+
+He was walking alone. "How's Mrs. McLean to-day?" I inquired.
+
+"She's well," said Lin, turning his eye from mine. "Who's your friend
+all bugged up in English clothes?"
+
+"About as good a man as you," said I, "and more cautious."
+
+"Him and his eye-glasses!" said the sceptical puncher, still looking
+away from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor.
+That excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his
+teeth shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+
+"Telegram from Hilbrun," he shouted; "be here to-morrow"; and he
+hastened up.
+
+"Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+private," added Ogden. "Great, isn't it?"
+
+"You bet!" said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+excitement mollified Mr. McLean. "Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?" said
+he.
+
+"Never. Have you?"
+
+Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+
+"We're going to show the telegram to Jode," said the Governor; and he
+and Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+
+"Well, I must be getting along myself," said Lin; but he continued
+walking slowly with me. "Where're yu' bound?" he said.
+
+"Nowhere in particular," said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a
+little more.
+
+"You're going to meet the train to-morrow?" said he.
+
+"The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?"
+
+"Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years."
+
+"Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's
+the rule. Don't you?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?"
+
+"No. But it'll be fun to see him try."
+
+"Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow."
+
+"See you to-morrow, Lin."
+
+He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure.
+A hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after
+him, pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the
+club, telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had
+inquired for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that
+he had lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying "I told
+you so" to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had
+not come so home to me until our little walk together just now along the
+boards.
+
+At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty--a
+particular drink, the Allston cocktail. "It's the bitters that does the
+trick," he was saying, but saw me and called out: "You ought to have
+been with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read
+it through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with
+his anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get
+out he sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so
+I said, 'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And
+Jode, he quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your
+despatch is genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!" And
+the Governor slapped his knee. "Why, he's so set against Hilbrun," he
+continued, "I guess if he knew of something he could explode to stop
+rain he'd let her fly!"
+
+"No, he wouldn't," said I. "He'd not consider that honorable."
+
+"That's so," the Governor assented. "Jode'll play fair."
+
+It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise--a game between a
+well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan.
+And it was the charlatan had our sympathy--as all charlatans, whether
+religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary
+and the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the
+cart, and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned
+out an unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not
+remember afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it
+was a hot day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he
+put into the cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance
+to the eye. He desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his
+apparatus in the building provided for him; and we set out for it at
+once. It was an untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant
+might cut a hole in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for
+the first time--a tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak
+mouth. "This is Mr. Lusk," said the rain-maker; and we shook hands,
+Ogden and I exchanging a glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill
+Street--or Capitol Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has
+grown fuller of pomp and emptier of prosperity--and I thought we made an
+unusual procession: the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the
+way to the barn; the cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his
+packed-up mysteries; McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious
+bigamy; and in the rear, Odgen nudging me in the ribs. That it was the
+correct Lusk we had with us I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy,
+vacant appearance, strong-bodied and shiftless--the sort of man to weary
+of one trade and another, and make a failure of wife beating between
+whiles. In Twenty-fourth Street--the town's uttermost rim--the Governor
+met us, and stared at Lusk. "Christopher!" was his single observation;
+but he never forgets a face--cannot afford to, now that he is in
+politics; and, besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a
+man to whom you owe ten dollars.
+
+"So you've quit hauling poles?" said the Governor.
+
+"Nothing in it, sir," said Lusk.
+
+"Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?" asked the
+rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+
+"What! going to throw your bombs through it?" said the Governor, smiling
+heartily.
+
+But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system,
+but a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. "Not that
+the bomb don't produce first-class results at times and under
+circumstances," he said, "but it's uncertain and costly."
+
+The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told
+us was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+hole, which saved delay. "And what day would you prefer the shower?"
+said Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+
+"Any day would do," the Governor said.
+
+This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+business to detain him from witnessing the shower--though it seemed to
+me that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable
+as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry
+and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+
+I saw a sorry spectacle in the street--the bridegroom and the bride
+shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a
+scarlet parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of
+purchase on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with
+splendor, like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as
+well have been behind, and his bearing was so different from his
+wonted happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+"Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk." But it was "Mrs. McLean" I said, of course.
+She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, "Come on, Lin,"
+something like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a
+good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, "It takes a woman to know
+what to buy for house-keepin,"; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared
+him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in
+keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider
+to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were
+only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but
+one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs.
+Lusk, perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant
+rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the
+north corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at
+all, haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
+
+On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing.
+The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the
+barn, snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be
+chlorine, the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part
+responsible; and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The
+world was as still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever;
+and the sky over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours.
+This tenacity in the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official
+pleasure. We could tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor
+reminded him that no rain was contracted for until the next day, he
+mentioned that the approach of a storm is something that modern science
+is able to ascertain long in advance; and he bade us come to his office
+whenever we pleased, and see for ourselves what science said. This was,
+at any rate, something to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him
+about five. Lin McLean joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering
+alone in the street, and he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on
+friends. I saw that he did not know how to spend the short recess or
+holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the society of others, and
+with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He had become converted
+to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing
+this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the
+signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the
+careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+
+"A hair hygrometer," he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it.
+"The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of
+a prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the
+divided arc of--"
+
+"What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?" called out the Governor,
+who had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the
+tubes and dials. "What will this one do?" he asked, and poked at a wet
+paper disc. But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had
+to do with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention
+wandered, and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly
+revolved and set a number of dial hands going different ways. "Hi!" said
+the Governor, delighted. "Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air
+velocity in feet. Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What
+you'll need, Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes."
+
+"I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor," Jode retorted at once.
+"And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+there." He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+crystal. "An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen,"
+Jode continued--though none of us would have said anything like
+that--"but unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+corroborated, as you will find you must admit." Jode's voice was almost
+threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers;
+I caught the fleeting sound of words like "meniscus" and "terrestrial
+minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through
+some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand--a
+series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service
+officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date
+of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible.
+"And I tell you," Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, "there's
+no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,"--he was shrieking
+jubilantly--"there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!"
+
+We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. "Gee whiz!" said
+the Governor. "I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use."
+
+We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+scientist. "That's what they all say," he said. "I'll do my talking
+to-morrow."
+
+"If any of you gentlemen, or your friends," said Assistant Lusk,
+stepping up, "feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to
+accommodate you."
+
+"What do yu' want this evenin'?" said Lin McLean, promptly.
+
+"Five to one," said Lusk.
+
+"Go yu' in twenties," said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived
+this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out--or
+what of it still survived his bride's shopping. "Will you hold stakes,
+doctor?" he said to the Governor.
+
+But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five
+to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and
+then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered
+our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next
+morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a
+universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes
+instantly whipped out his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and
+disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but
+was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+
+Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze
+anywhere, and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was
+freely offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so
+she might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed
+husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad
+of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented
+their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that
+it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
+
+The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside
+the hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube,
+the possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the
+extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one
+restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella.
+In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs.
+Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast
+progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the
+well-known legend, "I am somewhat of a liar myself." And all the while
+the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the
+certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came
+from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with
+a chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new
+indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden,
+padded, dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They
+blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all,
+and ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those
+rapid, unconvincing weather changes of the drama.
+
+Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things
+on earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized
+upon Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger
+and acquaintance: "It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me"' And the
+crowd would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as
+he went proclaiming to the world. "A failure, sir! The fellow's an
+impostor, as I well knew. It's no half-inch!" Which was true.
+
+"What have you got to say to that?" we asked Hilbrun, swarming around
+him.
+
+"If you'll just keep cool," said he--"it's only the first instalment. In
+about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest."
+
+Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences
+and sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down
+door-steps, women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the
+chattering Jode flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge
+Burrage apostrophized Providence in his front yard, with the
+postmaster's label still pinned to his back. Nobody minded the sluicing
+downpour--this second instalment was much more of a thing than the
+first--and Hilbrun alone kept a calm exterior--the face of the man who
+lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an impressive glance at the audience.
+Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success I saw him put
+a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy
+leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate
+and proceeded toward him, extending the hand of congratulation. "Mr.
+Hilbrun," said he, "I am Judge Burrage--the Honorable T. Coleman
+Burrage--and I will say that I am most favorably impressed with your
+shower."
+
+"His shower!" yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+
+"Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?" said Lin McLean, grinning.
+
+"I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen," said Jode, ignoring the
+facetious puncher.
+
+"You're mistaken," said Hilbrun, sharply.
+
+"It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch," said Lin.
+
+"If he's short he don't get his money," said some ignoble subscriber
+
+"Yes, he will," said the Governor, "or I'm a short. He's earned it."
+
+"You bet "' said Lin. "Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+doctor, I'll chip--Shucks!" Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket;
+he remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now
+possessed possibly two dollars in silver, all told. "I can't chip
+in, doctor," he said. "That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's
+filling up on the prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest
+show I've ever saw. You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!" And Lin
+clapped the rain-maker on the shoulder, exulting. He had been too well
+entertained to care what he had in his pocket, and his wife had not yet
+occurred to him.
+
+They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under
+half an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we
+stood talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to
+Jode, saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously
+with these, riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out
+the rain had flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from
+as far as thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a
+cloud. It staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the rain-maker, "I'm packed up, and my train'll
+be along soon--would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?"
+
+Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely
+performed his side of the contract.
+
+"I think different, gentlemen," said he. "But I'll unpack and let that
+train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay
+me" (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the
+fence) "I'll flood your town."
+
+In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in
+the total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards
+and precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+over.
+
+"I'm obliged," said Hilbrun, simply.
+
+"If I had foreseen, gentlemen," said Jode, too deeply grieved now to
+feel anger, "that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing
+your money through this--this absurd occurrence, I would have declined
+to help you. It becomes my duty," he continued, turning coldly to
+the inebriated Lusk, "to hand this to you, sir." And the assistant
+lurchingly stuffed his stakes away.
+
+"It's worth it," said Lin. "He's welcome to my cash."
+
+"What's that you say, Lin McLean?" It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+surged to the front.
+
+"I'm broke. He's got it. That's all," said Lin, briefly.
+
+"Broke! You!" She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+preliminary howl.
+
+At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. "It's my darling
+Kate," he said. "Why, Kate!"
+
+The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean;
+for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her
+first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin
+was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our
+benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the
+second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish,
+tearful, and affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian
+angel, indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous
+defiance at Lin. "Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you
+sage-brush bigamist!" is what the marvelous female said.
+
+"Bigamist?" repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. "I ain't," he said to
+Ogden and me. "I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her."
+
+"Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+before ever I come acrosst yus."
+
+"You and him?" murmured the puncher.
+
+"Her and me," whimpered Lusk. "Sidney." He sat up with a limp, confiding
+stare at everybody.
+
+"Sidney who?" said Lin.
+
+"No, no," corrected Lusk, crossly--"Sidney, Nebraska."
+
+The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice.
+But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+
+"Who are yu', anyway--when yu' ain't drunk?" demanded Lin.
+
+"He's as good a man as you, and better," snorted the guardian angel.
+"Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find."
+
+"Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska--" Lin began.
+
+"No, no," corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew--"Jim."
+
+"Good-bye, gentlemen," said the rain-maker. "That's the west-bound. I'm
+perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+Salt Lake City."
+
+"You are?" shouted Lin McLean. "Him and Jim's going to work it again!
+For goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!"
+
+At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten,
+and ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his
+duties should detain him. But Jode went!
+
+"Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen," said he to Ogden, McLean,
+and me, "and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure."
+
+"Which way are yu' bettin'?" Lin asked.
+
+"With my principles, sir," answered the little signal-service officer.
+
+"I expect I ain't got any," said the puncher. "It's Jim I'm backin' this
+time."
+
+"See here," said I; "I want to talk to you." We went into another car,
+and I did.
+
+"And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?" the
+puncher said.
+
+"Do you mean I ought to have--"
+
+"Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all
+the same. Yu' have good friends, and all that." He looked out of the
+window. "Laramie already!" he commented, and got out and walked by
+himself on the platform until we had started again. "Yu' have good
+friends," he pursued, settling himself so his long legs were stretched
+and comfortable, "and they tell yu' things, and you tell them things.
+And when it don't make no particular matter one way or the other, yu'
+give 'em your honest opinion and talk straight to 'em, and they'll
+come to you the same way. So that when yu're ridin' the range alone
+sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things over on top maybe of some
+dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about some fellow yu' know mighty
+well, 'There's a man is a good friend of mine.' And yu' mean it. And
+it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced in a while they're bound
+to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the man then--your good
+friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be. Standin' off, keepin' his
+mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail out. If he tried to show
+it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks! Circumstances have showed
+me the trail this time, you bet!" And the puncher's face, which had been
+sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly hand on my knee.
+
+"The trail's pretty simple," said I.
+
+"You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu'," said Lin, with the air
+of having made a discovery, "when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs
+in this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his
+dyin'. I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell
+their wives."
+
+"Never was married," said I.
+
+"Well--no more was I. Let's go to bed." And Lin shook my hand, and gave
+me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+
+At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western
+holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against
+rain--only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free.
+Indeed; the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine
+have a nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the
+sights: floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of
+the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of saints in robes speaking from heaven
+to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm-hand, and in
+the street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the
+new--or perhaps I should say the original--husband and wife.
+
+"She's corralled Sidney's cash!" said the delighted Lin. "He can't bet
+nothing on this shower."
+
+And then, after all, this time--it didn't rain!
+
+Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased
+a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went
+somewhere else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the
+money, retained him with her.
+
+"Good luck to yu', Sidney!" said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+since Cheyenne. "I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married." He
+paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that
+she threw after him.
+
+Jode also felt "a heap better." Legitimate science had triumphed.
+To-day, most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a
+coincidence. South Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin
+the few dollars that I had lent the puncher.
+
+"And what will you do now?" I said to Lin.
+
+"Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+keep a single man."
+
+
+
+A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+
+The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled
+it between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew
+absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with
+a slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be
+more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children
+to whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had
+put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom,
+and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely
+planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround
+him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed
+from a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into
+town from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the
+others, rounded the Capitol's enclosure, and, approaching with radiant
+countenance leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again
+greeted him with a hilarious "Hello, Doc!"
+
+Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several
+years, hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and,
+inquiring who might be the other riders behind, was told that they were
+Shorty, Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. "And dandies to
+hit town with," Mr. McLean added. "Red-hot."
+
+"I am acquainted with them," assented his Excellency.
+
+"We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks," the cow-puncher continued,
+"makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every
+day. So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to
+feed high."
+
+Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+their coming rites.
+
+"We've soured on scenery," he finished, in his drastic idiom. "We're
+sick of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time."
+
+"Call on me," remarked the Governor, cheerily, "when you're ready for
+bromides and sulphates."
+
+"I ain't box-headed no more," protested Mr. McLean; "I've got maturity,
+Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+That's my rule."
+
+"That your rule, too?" inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye,
+and Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+expressionless upon their horses.
+
+"We ain't talkin', we're waitin'," observed Chalkeye; and the three
+cynics smiled amiably.
+
+"Well, Doc, see yu' again," said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or
+came up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+unsuspecting Governor.
+
+"What's your hurry?" said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty
+manner. "Come along with me."
+
+"Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?"
+
+"Christmasing," replied Fate.
+
+"Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?"
+
+"Yes; I'm buying toys."
+
+"Toys! You? What for?"
+
+"Oh, some kids."
+
+"Yourn?" screeched Lin, precipitately.
+
+His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he
+held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. "Not mine, I'm happy
+to say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me
+uncle, and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think
+it's a girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these
+little folks at Christmas they'd be wondering--not the kids, they just
+break your toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder--'What's
+the matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on
+us?'--that's where the strain comes!" he broke off, facing Mr. McLean
+with another spacious laugh.
+
+But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran
+on exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
+intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+
+"That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a
+stick, and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too
+much, and you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie,
+and--well, I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in
+luck. Christmas don't trouble a chap fixed like you."
+
+Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+
+"A chap fixed like you!" The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. "No,
+sure." He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+going down the road. "That's a new idea--Christmas," he murmured, for it
+was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+his first long trousers.
+
+"Comes once a year pretty regular," remarked the prosperous Governor.
+"Seems often when you pay the bill."
+
+"I haven't made a Christmas gift," pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
+"not for--for--Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know anybody
+that has any right to look for such a thing from me." This was indeed a
+new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.
+
+"Gee whiz!" said Barker, briskly, "there goes twelve o'clock. I've got
+to make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!"
+
+His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops
+with the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and
+he struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall
+some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made
+him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently
+watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his
+speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they
+took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and
+wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and
+met face to face with Mr. McLean.
+
+"The boys are seein' after my horse," Lin rapidly began, "and I've got
+to meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu'
+see, and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--" Here
+Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. "Doc,
+I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know."
+
+The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind,
+and was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
+selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a
+couple of dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an
+imperfect honesty that he said, "You'll help me a heap."
+
+And Lin, quite sincere, replied, "Thank yu'."
+
+So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man
+has been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall;
+the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as
+young as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known
+the cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without
+breeding contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder
+and drew him among the petticoats and toys.
+
+Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin
+saw them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations
+of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with
+that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal
+human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's
+brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children
+escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch
+and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
+rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
+sound of musical boxes.
+
+Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
+and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
+knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
+must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
+much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
+ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying
+that his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a
+step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily
+have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence,
+waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some
+infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the
+frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could
+make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and
+forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if
+he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while
+these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of
+him, he was locked outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural
+press of customers, long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing
+and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished,
+he was ready to go on to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean.
+He found him obliterated in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa
+Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
+
+"He looks livelier than you do," said the hearty Governor. "'Fraid it's
+been slow waiting."
+
+"No," replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. "No, I guess not."
+
+This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+"You never did lie to me," he said, "long as I've known you. Well, never
+mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now."
+
+At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. "Say Doc," said he, "what do
+yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?"
+
+"A big practice--big enough to interfere with my politics."
+
+"What else? Things and truck, I mean."
+
+"Oh--nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like
+me."
+
+"Don't they? Don't they?"
+
+"Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"I believe you're in earnest!" cried his Excellency. "That's simply
+rich!" Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town "heeled
+for a big time," finds that presents are all the rage, and must
+immediately give somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous
+Frontier! So thought the good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial
+misconception. "My dear fellow," he added, meaning as well as possible,
+"I don't want you to spend your money on me."
+
+"I've got plenty all right," said Lin, shortly.
+
+"Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with
+you. You didn't expect anything from me?"
+
+"That ain't--that don't--"
+
+"There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+Here's our shop." They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+counters. "Now," pursued the Governor, "this is for a very particular
+friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?"
+
+They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision
+after one look. "That," said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound,
+or, at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned
+that there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+
+The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. "I know
+that Tennyson is what she--is what's wanted," he muttered; and, feeling
+himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture
+he took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand,
+found himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and
+the cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all
+people. Barker picked it up and gave it back. "No, no, no!" he said,
+mirthful over his own inclination to be annoyed; "you can't do that. I'm
+just as much obliged, Lin," he added.
+
+"Just as a loan, Doc--some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash."
+
+A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp
+young lady was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily
+for Tennyson's expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his
+discountenanced savings back into his clothes. Making haste to leave
+the book department of this shop, they regained a mutual ease, and
+the Governor became waggish over Lin's concern at being too rich. He
+suggested to him the list of delinquent taxpayers and the latest census
+from which to select indigent persons. He had patients, too, whose
+inveterate pennilessness he could swear cheerfully to--"since you want
+to bolt from your own money," he remarked.
+
+"Yes, I'm a green horse," assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; "ain't used to
+the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em."
+
+From his face--that jocular mask--one might have counted him the most
+serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
+would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering
+body, but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean
+of old days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy
+ground. "I've got it!" he exclaimed; "give your wife something."
+
+The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+"If you'll give me her name and address," said he, with the future
+entirely in his mind.
+
+"Why, Laramie!" and the Governor feigned surprise.
+
+"Say, Doc," said Lin, uneasily, "none of 'em ain't married me since I
+saw yu' last."
+
+"Then she hasn't written from Laramie," said the hilarious Governor, and
+Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. "Gee whiz!"
+went on Barker, "I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!"
+
+But the mask fell now. "You're talking of his wife, not mine," said the
+cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; "and, Doc, I'm going to
+say a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll
+never forget that day myself--but I don't want to be reminded of it."
+
+"I'm a fool, Lin," said the Governor, generous instantly. "I never
+supposed--"
+
+"I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way--in
+a way--" Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker,
+seeing how wistful his face had turned, waited. "But I ain't quite the
+same fool I was before that happened to me," the cow-puncher resumed,
+"though maybe my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was
+better luck than a man like me had any call to look for."
+
+The sobered Barker said, simply, "Yes, Lin." He was put to thinking by
+these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+
+Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick,
+red cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
+knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle
+and took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife
+to the best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were
+confident he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival
+and beating him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the
+marriage was an inadvertence. "He jest bumped into it before he could
+pull up," they explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's
+sporting blood, had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali.
+For the new-made husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that
+came upon him he tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before,
+and learned also how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink
+beneath the man in baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived
+innocent until this time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so
+that citizens in Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued
+shrewdly that men of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the
+strain had broken his endurance an unexpected first husband, named
+Lusk, had appeared one Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving,
+and exceedingly drunk. To the arms of Lusk she went back in the public
+street, deserting McLean in the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne
+saw this, and learned how she had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if
+intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too,
+and went about his business, ready to swagger at the necessary moment,
+and with the necessary kind of joke always ready to shield his hurt
+spirit. And soon, of course, the matter grew stale, seldom raked up in
+the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at work; so lately he had begun
+to remember other things beside the smouldering humiliation.
+
+"Is she with him?" he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the
+moral that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and
+revealed the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he
+quieted the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote
+about the house of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days,
+thus getting one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined
+his opinion of the family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker
+detailed these incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs.
+Lusk addicted to opium.
+
+"I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em," said McLean, grimly, "if I
+strike Laramie."
+
+"You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?"
+Barker ventured.
+
+"Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only--yu' see now. A man gets tired
+pretending--onced in a while."
+
+Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness
+of the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys.
+He had come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and
+well disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing
+with each other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of
+hurry to escape from that loneliness where his human promptings had been
+lodged with him useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale,
+and he with his pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of
+Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with,
+he stepped out with a brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and
+a foretaste of a good time coming that he put on his town clothes, after
+shaving and admiring himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate
+away and drank with a robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even
+himself at first. But the sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for
+all he could do. As he groped for the contentment which he saw around
+him he began to receive the jokes with counterfeit mirth. Memories took
+the place of anticipation, and through their moody shiftings he began
+to feel a distaste for the company of his friends and a shrinking from
+their lively voices. He blamed them for this at once. He was surprised
+to think he had never recognized before how light a weight was Shorty;
+and here was Chalkeye, who knew better, talking religion after two
+glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his friends' shortcomings
+mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont, changed at a stroke.
+"I'm celebrating no Christmas with this crowd," said the inner man; and
+when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their hilarity he was gone.
+
+Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to
+meet a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station,
+buying a ticket for Denver.
+
+"Denver!" exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+
+"That's what I said," stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+
+"Gee whiz!" went his Excellency. "What are you going to do there?"
+
+"Get good and drunk."
+
+"Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?"
+
+"I'm drinking champagne this trip."
+
+The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+inside the door.
+
+"And he says he's got maturity," Barker muttered. "I've known him since
+seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along." The
+Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+fool. "Yes, about eight. Or six," said his Excellency, justifying
+himself by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen,
+supreme in length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling
+for an early mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished,
+he had mended the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and
+Lin's utter health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon
+overflowed with the pride of science, and over the bandages would
+explain the human body technically to his wild-eyed and flattered
+patient. Thus young Lin heard all about tibia, and comminuted, and other
+glorious new words, and when sleepless would rehearse them. Then,
+with the bone so nearly knit that the patient might leave the ward
+on crutches to sit each morning in Barker's room as a privilege, the
+disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out of the hospital and
+hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and variety waited for
+a languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was soon carried back
+with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's surgical rage was disarmed, the
+patient was so forlorn over his doctor's professional chagrin.
+
+"I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?" he had said, humbly,
+after a new week of bed and weights.
+
+"Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all."
+
+"Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+son-of-a-gun?"
+
+You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all
+and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had
+missed the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected
+thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
+
+"He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent," said
+Barker. "Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again."
+
+At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked
+the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin
+took Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw
+a saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher
+over there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly.
+In such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to
+enjoy without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he
+looked along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric
+lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried
+"Shine? Shine?" at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the
+right to get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of
+stopping at all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a
+few yards, and it was across the street. This one being attained and
+appreciated, he found that he must cross back again or skip number four.
+At this rate he would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre,
+and he stopped to consider. It was a German place he had just
+quitted, and a huge light poured out on him from its window, which the
+proprietor's father-land sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone
+among a well-set pine forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots
+and reached upward to Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held
+in his right hand forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a
+string of sausages that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American
+back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he
+had not changed since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered
+carefully the Hot Scotch question, and which side of the road to take
+and stick to, while the little bootblacks found him once more and cried,
+"Shine? Shine?" monotonous as snow-birds. He settled to stay over here
+with the south-side Scotches, and the little one-note song reaching his
+attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly
+sprang away.
+
+"Dare you to touch him!" piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+
+"Don't hit me," said Mr. McLean "I'm innocent."
+
+"Well, you leave him be," said one.
+
+"What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?"
+
+"New!" said Billy, in scorn. "Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+is."
+
+"He's a special!" shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. "He's got a
+badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer."
+
+Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. "Dare you
+to arrest me!" said he.
+
+"What'll you give me not to?" inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+pockets, arms akimbo.
+
+"Nothing; I've done nothing," announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and
+he, too, sped into the middle of the street.
+
+"What's he claim you lifted?" inquired the leader, with eagerness.
+"Tell him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!" they
+screamed to the special officer.
+
+"Say," said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, "you're poor judges
+of a badge, you fellows."
+
+His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+
+Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+window. "Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here," said he,
+following his sprightly invention, "he'd get arrested himself."
+
+This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+the last.
+
+"If it's your idea," pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+cautious steps nearer the curb, "that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug--why, I'll
+get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar."
+
+The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+
+"Easy!" wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+fascinated. "Not having three feet," said the cow-puncher, always grave
+and slow, "I can only give two this here job."
+
+"He's got a big pistol and a belt!" exulted the leader, who had
+precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+
+"You're a smart boy," said Lin, considering him, "and yu' find a man out
+right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they
+fix the boots--and a dollar goes to the quickest through."
+
+Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a
+boot, with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr.
+McLean.
+
+"That's a Colt.45 you've got," ventured he.
+
+"Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe."
+
+"I'm through!" sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+
+Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+
+"Will you kindly referee," said he, forgivingly, to the leader, "and
+decide which of them smears is the awfulest?"
+
+But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+
+"Well, that saves me money," said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket.
+"I guess you've both won." He handed each of them a dollar. "Now," he
+continued, "I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+dollar for the best shine."
+
+The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played
+his mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out
+his beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+
+Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher
+perceived, and Billy no seasoned expert. "See here," said Lin, stooping,
+"I'll show yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough
+to steer anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with
+a dry brush."
+
+"Lemme," said Billy. "I've got to learn." So he finished the boot his
+own way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this
+event was also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both
+parties. So here was their work done, and more money in their pockets
+than from all the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and
+Billy did not wish for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune
+as soon as might be. Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window,
+drawn by curiosity near this new kind of man whose voice held them and
+whose remarks dropped them into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted
+leader had been unable to go away and nurse his pride alone.
+
+"Is that a secret society?" inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+badge.
+
+Mr. McLean nodded. "Turruble," said he.
+
+"You're a Wells & Fargo detective," asserted the leader.
+
+"Play your harp," said Lin.
+
+"Are you a--a desperaydo?" whispered Towhead.
+
+"Oh, my!" observed Mr. McLean, sadly; "what has our Jack been readin'?"
+
+"He's a cattle-man!" cried Billy. "I seen his heels."
+
+"That's you!" said the discovered puncher, with approval. "You'll do.
+But I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to
+do this night."
+
+At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+
+"We--are--sworn--don't yu' jump, now, and give me away--sworn--to--blow
+off three bootblacks to a dinner."
+
+"Ah, pshaw!" They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+
+"That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up--for I
+have it to do!"
+
+"Dare you to! Ah!"
+
+"And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+Cant'!"
+
+They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+
+"I can't waste my time on such smart boys," said Mr. McLean, rising
+lazily to his full height from the window-sill. "I am goin' somewhere to
+find boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey."
+
+He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+
+On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few
+remarks. He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that
+would have led to conversation under almost any circumstances save
+these; but the minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole
+state of things for them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr.
+McLean in silence, at a wary interval, and with their mouths, during
+most of the journey, open. The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk,
+and the unusual dollars, wakened wide their bent for the unexpected,
+their street affinity for the spur of the moment; they believed slimly
+in the turkey part of it, but what this man might do next, to be
+there when he did it, and not to be trapped, kept their wits jumping
+deliciously; so when they saw him stop, they stopped instantly too, ten
+feet out of reach. This was Denver's most civilized restaurant--that one
+which Mr. McLean had remembered, with foreign dishes and private rooms,
+where he had promised himself, among other things, champagne. Mr. McLean
+had never been inside it, but heard a tale from a friend; and now he
+caught a sudden sight of people among geraniums, with plumes and white
+shirt-fronts, very elegant. It must have been several minutes that he
+stood contemplating the entrance and the luxurious couples who went in.
+
+"Plumb French!" he observed at length; and then, "Shucks!" in a key less
+confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. "They're
+eatin' patty de parley-voo in there," he muttered, and the three
+bootblacks came beside him. "Say, fellows," said Lin, confidingly, "I
+wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm
+after a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a
+fit. What do yu' say, boys?"
+
+That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+
+"Ah, you come along with us--we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose
+yer." So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they
+clustered about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started
+obediently, and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+
+"Christmas is comin' now, sure," said Lin, grinning to himself. "It
+ain't exactly what I figured on." It was the first time he had laughed
+since Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with
+the new warmth in his heart.
+
+Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they
+went along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and
+then stole at him a doubtful look.
+
+The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and
+the oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and
+several choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient;
+and to witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket
+and its wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the
+guests a transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as
+frankly ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all
+grew fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr.
+McLean stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+
+"Have a cigarette?" said the leader, over his pie.
+
+"Thank yu'," said Lin. "I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me." He had
+devised a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+
+"Chewin's no good at meals," continued the boy. "Don't you use
+tobaccer?"
+
+"Onced in a while."
+
+The leader spat brightly. "He ain't learned yet," said he, slanting his
+elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. "But beer, now--I
+never seen anything in it." He and Towhead soon left Billy and his
+callow profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that
+silenced him, and set him listening with all his admiring young might.
+Nor did Mr. McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this
+knowledge, which seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+
+"I'll be goshed," he thought, "if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now."
+But now the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive
+apprenticeship. "Hello, boys!" he said, "that theatre's got a big start
+on us."
+
+They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. "This man here will look out
+for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning."
+
+They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of
+the highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced
+so helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain
+Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other
+scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. The
+Captain's youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a
+sudden motion, loudly shouted, "Sister, the ice is closing in!" and she
+replied, chastely, "Then let us pray." It was a superb tableau: the ice
+split, and the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop
+fell, and male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out to the
+rum-shop.
+
+Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out
+in him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+
+"Don't you think this is splendid?" said he.
+
+"Splendid," Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+
+"Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?"
+
+"Humming," said Lin.
+
+"Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?"
+
+"What, young fellow?"
+
+"Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff."
+
+"I guess it must be."
+
+"She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to
+do what she wanted him."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that
+boat, and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends
+feel bad?"
+
+"I hardly expect they would," replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+mindful of Billy, "except there wasn't nothin' else they could think
+of," he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+
+"Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+off with a pole. Wouldn't you?"
+
+"Butted her like a ram," exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+
+"Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+a-going to, an' he--I think he is a flubdub anyway."
+
+"I'll bet he is!" said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+guardian.
+
+"I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his
+knees. An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them
+putting up any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an'
+I says, 'Dare you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing,
+an' I'd not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you
+pray much?"
+
+"No," replied Lin, uneasily.
+
+"There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell.
+'You lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard
+the first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that
+mad! But I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents."
+
+"Yu' must have felt like a millionaire."
+
+"Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked
+by her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any
+time. Lemme see your pistol."
+
+"You wait," said Lin. "After this show is through I'll put it on you."
+
+"Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?"
+
+"Lord! lots."
+
+"Honest? Silver-tips?"
+
+"Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced."
+
+"O-h! I never shot a bear."
+
+"You'd ought to try it."
+
+"I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to
+see you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?"
+Billy had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+
+"You bet!" said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy.
+As with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he
+met--the few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite
+play for him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+
+"Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good."
+
+Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. "Laramie!" said he, almost
+shouting it. "Yu'--yu'--is your name Lusk?"
+
+But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. "You're not going to take me
+home?" he piteously wailed.
+
+"Heaven and heavens!" murmured Lin McLean. "So you're her kid!"
+
+He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by
+a brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the
+boy, and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+that should restore the perished confidence. "Why did yu' lead him off?"
+he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know;
+but as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and
+more sorrowful. "I just hate him to think that of me," he reflected.
+The curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they
+should all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain
+Grant grew hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin
+sat saying to himself a number of contradictions. "He's nothing to
+me; what's any of them to me?" Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he
+restated the facts of the past. "Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before
+she'd ever laid eyes on me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never
+even my step-kid." The past, however, brought no guidance. "Lord, what's
+the thing to do about this? If I had any home--This is a stinkin' world
+in some respects," said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the
+chair beneath which the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband.
+They took it for emotion over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and
+their backs shook. Presently each turned, and saw the singular man with
+untamed, wide-open eyes glowering at the stage, and both backs shook
+again.
+
+Once more his hand was laid on Billy. "Say!" The boy glanced at him, and
+quickly away.
+
+"Look at me, and listen."
+
+Billy swervingly obeyed.
+
+"I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+Are yu' listenin' good?"
+
+The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: "You've got no call
+to believe what I say to yu'--yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
+So I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I
+saw yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw
+all I want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If
+yu' happen to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come
+around to Smith's Palace--that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?--and if
+yu' don't come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night
+I'm liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
+to yourself. I've appreciated your company."
+
+Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds
+in it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. "It's a lost
+boy--a runaway," he told the clerk. "He'll not be extra clean, I expect,
+if he does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut
+out to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe."
+
+The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+
+"Hello!" said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+Pike's Peak.
+
+Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention,
+came stepping along. "I'm not a-going back to Laramie," he stated,
+warningly.
+
+"I wouldn't," said Lin. "It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner--I'm dead sleepy."
+
+"O-h!" Billy stood blank. "I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+lemme black your boots in the morning?"
+
+"Not sure my train don't go too early."
+
+"I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em."
+
+"Where do yu' sleep?"
+
+"Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me
+to-night?"
+
+"Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs."
+
+But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first
+to hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the
+belt round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders
+outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+
+"Did it ever kill a man?" asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+
+"No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+killin' me."
+
+"Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen." He brought out
+the relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. "I foun' it myself,
+camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?"
+
+Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+
+"Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's."
+
+"Who's Kelley?"
+
+"He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's
+how she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran
+then. An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her
+spell--an' father can't stop her, an' I--ah, I was sick of it! She's
+lamed me up twice beating me--an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless
+my mother!' a-getting up and a-going to bed--he's a flubdub! An' so I
+cleared out. But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father--an'
+you. I'll do it now if you say it's any sense."
+
+Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. "Don't yu' do it now," said he.
+
+"You wouldn't like mother," Billy continued. "You can keep that." He
+came to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside
+him. "Do you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five
+kinds--sage-hen, an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more
+kinds harder--but I couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought
+the magpie's, though. D' you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you
+stay to-morrow an' I'll show you that en' some other things I got the
+engine-man lets me keep there, for there's boys that would steal an egg.
+An' I could take you where we could fire that pistol. Bet you don't know
+what that is!"
+
+He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were
+things that rattled.
+
+Mr. McLean gave it up.
+
+"That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with
+the engine-man."
+
+Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience
+made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
+his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
+the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man
+held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion
+that Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
+suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
+was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The
+arms and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
+conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
+frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
+breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the
+long, curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the
+door of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and
+kissed Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a
+hangdog stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the
+sound sleep of health.
+
+He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering
+with his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
+slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
+he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
+filled with the bells and the sun of the winter's day. "Where have I
+struck now?" he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
+mind, he raised himself on his arm.
+
+There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+him.
+
+"You're awful late," said Responsibility. "But I weren't a-going without
+telling you good-bye."
+
+"Go?" exclaimed Lin. "Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+breakfast alone?" The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
+than he could do!
+
+"I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay--why, you said
+you was a-going by the early train!"
+
+"But the durned thing's got away on me," said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+the bed.
+
+"If I hadn't a-promised them--"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with
+them."
+
+"Shucks!"
+
+"We're a-going to have fun to-day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just
+as leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
+here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?"
+
+"Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?" inquired the artful McLean.
+"That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes."
+
+"Twenty minutes! If they'd wait--"
+
+"See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought
+to waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+engagements, yu' see--for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+treat a man that way now, could he?"
+
+"Course he couldn't," said Billy, brightening.
+
+"And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas,
+that only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's
+Billy?' They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll
+explain to us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars."
+
+The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy
+with a convincing eye.
+
+"That's so," said Billy.
+
+"And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out
+of Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now,
+Bill, what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just
+you and me?"
+
+"I'd like that," said Billy. "Is it all day?"
+
+"I was thinkin' of all day," said Lin. "I'll not make yu' do anything
+yu'd rather not."
+
+"Ah, they can smoke without me," said Billy, with sudden acrimony. "I'll
+see 'em to-morro'."
+
+"That's you!" cried Mr. McLean. "Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell
+them to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'."
+
+The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
+tying his scarf with great care. "Wished I'd a clean shirt," said he.
+"But I don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good
+move." He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was
+particular to store them in his safest pocket. "I ain't sure whether
+you're crazy or not," said he to the man in the looking-glass. "I ain't
+never been sure." And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+
+He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+the bill of fare.
+
+"I'd like to see you often," said he. "I'll come and see you if you
+don't live too far."
+
+"That's the trouble," said the cow-puncher. "I do. Awful far." He stared
+out of the window.
+
+"Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+write?" "What's that? Can I write? Oh yes."
+
+"I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney,
+Nebraska, an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake--that's the finest town
+except Denver."
+
+Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to,
+yet goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable
+signs of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+the bill paid.
+
+The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from
+their peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over
+the city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells
+broke out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+
+"Don't you like music?" inquired Billy.
+
+"Yes," said Lin.
+
+Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting,
+orderly yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of
+Christmas came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day,
+possessor of his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort
+of friendly challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+
+"Don't you think we could go in here?" Billy asked. A church door was
+open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. "They've good
+music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been
+in lots of times."
+
+They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep
+in listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent
+imitation of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain
+especially reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time
+"Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing," pealed forth and ceased, both
+the delighted faces fell.
+
+"Don't you wish there was more?" Billy whispered.
+
+"Wish there was a hundred verses," answered Lin.
+
+But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between
+them they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel.
+Lin's eyes roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their
+evergreen, the flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and
+gold. "'Peace, good-will towards men,'" he read. "That's so. Peace and
+good-will. Yes, that's so. I expect they got that somewheres in the
+Bible. It's awful good, and you'd never think of it yourself."
+
+There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. "This is
+the hymn we have now," she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the
+book together, dutifully reading the words:
+
+   "It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth--"
+
+This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it,
+until he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the
+concluding ones:
+
+   "And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing."
+
+The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned
+his face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has
+reasons which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but
+when the service was over and he came out, he repeated again, "'Peace
+and good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if
+he'll preach on them words I'll be there."
+
+"Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?" asked Billy.
+
+"Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?"
+
+"No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?"
+
+"The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses.
+Why, we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among
+the foothills."
+
+To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+was walked off his young heels--a truth he learned complete in one
+horrid moment, and battled to conceal.
+
+"Lame!" he echoed, angrily. "I ain't."
+
+"Shucks!" said Lin, after the next ten steps. "You are, and both feet."
+
+"Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them."
+
+Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden.
+"I'm played out myself," he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
+lugubriously at Billy on a bed. "And I ain't fit to have charge of a
+hog." He came and put his hand on the boy's head.
+
+"I'm not sick," said the cripple. "I tell you I'm bully. You wait an'
+see me eat dinner."
+
+But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+
+There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription
+and most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of
+vigil, while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed,
+better and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+
+"I couldn't work quick to-day," he said. "But I guess one day won't lose
+me my trade."
+
+"How d' yu' mean?" asked Lin.
+
+"Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has
+theirs, an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher
+an' lots, an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for
+nothing. I wished you lived in Denver."
+
+"Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+any of the outfit."
+
+"Why, I'm doing first-rate," said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+which Mr. McLean now burst. "An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+at any other job."
+
+"I want to see that engine-man," muttered Lin. "I don't like your
+smokin' friend."
+
+"Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?"
+
+"Smart's nothin'," observed Mr. McLean.
+
+"Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot," pursued Billy, engagingly.
+
+"I'll bet he has!" growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+aback at his language.
+
+It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched
+and shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through
+a scene in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and
+forgiveness, and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. "Shucks!"
+said he. "The kid would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him
+there, anyway."
+
+Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular
+man, with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that
+week noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little
+boy walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed
+as happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a
+word, and his face was serious.
+
+Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+
+"Hello!" said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. "Have a
+good drunk?"
+
+"Changed my mind," said Lin, grinning. "Proves I've got one. Struck
+Christmas all right, though."
+
+"Who's your friend?" inquired his Excellency.
+
+"This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at
+Sunk Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow."
+
+The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+plain.
+
+"Sufferin Moses!" remarked his Excellency.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+
+We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and
+jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were
+a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal
+lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of
+sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising
+into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our
+undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly,
+except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against
+Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and
+other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's
+blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized
+by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the
+distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+
+"They've caved!" he shouted.
+
+"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.
+
+"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+"They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must
+know all about it.
+
+"Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least.
+
+"Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+passed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."
+
+He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
+more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
+waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
+haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
+so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the
+emotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed
+employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the
+railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I
+dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of
+the station, and, at once remarking, "They're going to leave us alone,"
+sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where
+some cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail,
+and here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had
+got a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to
+appreciate the jests of these rollicking people. "Read it!" they said to
+me; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroad
+was going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would
+trust to Separ's good feeling. "Nothing more," the letter ran, "will be
+done about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall
+pass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will
+prove our genuine desire to benefit that section.
+
+"'Initial outrage,'" quoted one of the agent' large playmates. "Ain't
+they furgivin'?"
+
+"Well," said I, "you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+cow-catcher!"
+
+The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+
+"We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes," he drawled judicially, "I'd be mad at
+that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why,
+your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant." He took
+the paper from me, and read, sardonically: "'Subsequent vandalisms...
+wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the
+cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad
+'Policy of friendship... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!" And, shaking
+his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of
+the agent. "Tubercle," said he (this was their name for the agent, who
+had told all of us about his lungs), "it ain't your fault we saw their
+fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't
+bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late
+over this joke."
+
+Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had
+hit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive
+to frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its
+opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to
+think of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box
+painted "Hotel Brunswick"--"hotel" in small italics and "Brunswick" in
+enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+
+Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the
+line in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well
+known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant
+young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by
+her to see about supper and lodging.
+
+At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might
+ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals
+I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted
+and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several
+empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these
+freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by
+three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking
+through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But
+with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until
+five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door,
+where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the
+smell of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick
+to spend the remaining minutes in the air.
+
+"I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightened
+him!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
+"Why," she explained, "I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side
+are you going to butter your bread this evening?"
+
+"You had smelt it?" said I, still cloudy with surprise. "Yes.
+Unquestionably. Very rancid." She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+fellowship in her tone, said, "I was going to warn you--" when suddenly,
+down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. "Oh, dear!" she
+cried, starting up. "There's trouble."
+
+"Not trouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be in
+earnest. And you would be safe here."
+
+"Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we
+are respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
+yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home."
+The words "Louisville and Nashville" spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+
+"Unescorted all that way!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Isn't it awful?" said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
+the pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And she
+eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+
+"Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."
+
+"Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
+English!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+to herself, reprovingly, "If I'm not acting rude!"
+
+"Oh!" said I, rather familiarly.
+
+"It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so
+free with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and
+everything--I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking
+to--to folks around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose
+before her, and her eyes grew distant.
+
+I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall country
+girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not "folks around,"
+she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+dark as to them.
+
+"Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as far
+as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow."
+
+"You've got me all wrong," said I. "I'm not English; I'm not New York.
+I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when
+you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"
+
+"Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
+most Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
+since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit
+you, you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?"
+
+"I'd travel my money's length to meet her!" said I.
+
+A wave of pain crossed her face. "Nate didn't know," she said then,
+lightly. "You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+writing."
+
+Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+forgiven.
+
+"I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage," continued the girl.
+
+"Then I'll have your company on a weary road," said I; for my journey
+was now to that part of the cattle country.
+
+"To Buffalo?" she said, quickly. "Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is
+Nate Buckner." She paused. "Then you're not acquainted with him?"
+
+"I may have seen him," I answered, slowly. "But faces and names out here
+come and go."
+
+I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been
+sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity
+of the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and
+daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart;
+but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely
+years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to
+tell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if
+the stage went soon after supper.
+
+"Now isn't that a bother?" said she, when I answered that it did not
+start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. "Never
+mind," she continued, briskly; "I'm used to things. I'll just sit up
+somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure
+all that shooting's only jollification?"
+
+"Certain," I said. "But I'll go and see."
+
+"They always will have their fun," said she. "But I hate to have a poor
+boy get hurt--even him deserving it!"
+
+"They use pistols instead of fire-crackers," said I. "But you must never
+sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do."
+
+"Why, you're real kind!" she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+wondering what I ought to do.
+
+Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a
+sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable
+of its name.
+
+Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail
+after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly
+during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point
+these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp
+Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American
+railway man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt,
+but needless; and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief,
+businesslike result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on
+a board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the
+fat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees
+before it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees.
+There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were
+a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where
+you might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times
+enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the
+little station--some seven shanties all told. Between them were spaces
+of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midst
+ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a great
+string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one end
+in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyond
+each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of
+sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the
+continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed
+many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande
+similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds
+hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous
+young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot
+them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
+
+And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of
+the agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey
+Wiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up
+to telegraph for some additional cars.
+
+"I'm dead on to you!" squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight
+of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought
+it was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the
+water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind
+the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some
+fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth
+to an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and
+comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
+habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
+inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
+reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
+Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
+in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
+wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?
+
+They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that
+about the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
+round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
+out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
+should be so tactless.
+
+"If we don't get him used to us," observed the Virginian, "he and his
+pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man."
+
+Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it.
+The news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater,
+and playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting
+with pistols round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs
+improved, and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did not
+understand. But the company discerned no humor whatever in having its
+water-tank perforated, which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies
+and other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ. Now what
+should authority do upon these free plains, this wilderness of
+do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the air was like inebriation? The
+large, headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and out
+again meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselves
+resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; and
+later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they had
+side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his death
+accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.
+They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them forever
+from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things must be
+endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrong
+the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon
+Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for
+example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in
+town.
+
+It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would
+be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner.
+To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail,
+made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to
+the corrals.
+
+A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here was
+Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a
+stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+
+"Thought you were at school," said I.
+
+"Ah, school's quit," returned Billy, and changed the subject. "Say,
+Lin's hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with
+the outfit." And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+
+Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+reminded him of politics. "Wall Street," he was explaining to the agent,
+"has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+along to Chicago. We want--" Here he noticed me and, dragging his
+gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+
+"Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me," I remarked.
+
+"Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted."
+
+"Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean," simpered the agent.
+
+Lin fixed his eye on the man. "And you don't know it now," said he. Then
+he removed his eye. "Let's grub," he added to me. My friend did not walk
+to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. "Billy
+is a good kid," he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small
+mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a
+matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. "He's dead stuck on being a
+cow-puncher," he presently said.
+
+"Some day--" I began.
+
+"He don't want to wait that long," Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+"And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right.
+Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do
+the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,"
+stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I
+know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. "But
+Billy," Lin resumed, "has agreed to school again when it starts up in
+the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to." Affection crept
+anew over the cow-puncher's face. "He can learn books with the quickest
+when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to have
+a regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesome
+him seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--but
+shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted.
+But when I found him the little calf could run and notice like
+everything!"
+
+"I should hate your contract, Lin," said I. "Adopting's a touch-and-go
+business even when a man has a home."
+
+"I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was
+mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that
+got him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and
+then, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him
+hunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him
+till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man
+foreman--and he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see."
+
+"He's asking one hard enough," said I, digressing.
+
+"Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--" said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open,
+hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at
+me again, he said: "Don't you get off any more truck about eldest son
+and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that I
+care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'd
+not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set
+on--well--he didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and
+I'm going to make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him,
+if I can. Now you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?" His forehead was moist
+over getting the thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+
+"And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?" said I.
+
+He laughed shortly. "She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here"
+(Lin laid his hand on my shoulder), "if you can't expect a good time
+for yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason,
+can't yu'?"
+
+I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his
+hand off my shoulder); "I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met
+last. I guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself--Why,
+there's a girl!"
+
+"That there is!" said I. "And certainly the world owes her a better--"
+
+"She's a fine-looker," interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered "Supper!" with a
+shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+
+"Come!" said Lin, "let's hurry!"
+
+But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+sister's devoted journey.
+
+"Nate Buckner!" he exclaimed. "Him with a decent sister!"
+
+"It's the other way round," said I. "Her with him for a brother!"
+
+"He goes to the penitentiary this week," said Lin. "He had no more cash
+to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his
+sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved
+time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?"
+
+"I've not told her."
+
+"Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's not
+right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+gently."
+
+"Death's different," said I.
+
+"Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a
+shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd
+been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a
+skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick
+as the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be
+down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that
+crowd around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that.
+If you don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself." And Mr.
+McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+
+The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself
+at a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had
+veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye
+attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long
+weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he
+was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted
+proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it
+tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was
+going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding
+and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that
+springs from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the
+native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's
+uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted
+uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss
+Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean,
+knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a
+lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all
+in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's
+eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:
+
+"Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance."
+
+"If it's too rich for you," croaked the enraged proprietor, "use
+axle-dope."
+
+The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve
+the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin,
+to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying,
+in his Texas idiom,
+
+"Have butter."
+
+He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on "butter" cracked an
+octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+shake her head at the plate.
+
+Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose for
+none," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most to
+death."
+
+"I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slicker
+rubbed outside than swallered."
+
+At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+
+"You don't seem to know anything," observed Mr. McLean. "What toy-shop
+did you escape from?"
+
+"Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head in
+from the kitchen.
+
+"Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?" screamed the boy, furiously.
+"Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!"
+And he flounced out with his young boots.
+
+All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+
+"Who's hiring him?"
+
+"The C. Y. outfit," said another.
+
+"Half-circle L.," a third corrected.
+
+"I seen one like him onced," said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+his chair. "Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!"
+And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also
+silently dispersed.
+
+Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+the lady.
+
+Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+ceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+have my laugh."
+
+"That's all right, m'm," said he; "don't mention it."
+
+"For that boy, you know--"
+
+"I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him."
+
+"Now, please don't! Why--why--you were every bit as bad!" Miss Buckner
+pealed out, joyously. "It was the two of you. Oh dear!"
+
+Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. "I had no--I didn't go to--"
+
+"Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well,
+and--I know I ought to behave better!"
+
+"No, yu' oughtn't!" said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+deprecation, "You'll think us plumb ignorant."
+
+"You know enough to be kind to folks," said she.
+
+"We'd like to."
+
+"It's the only thing makes the world go round!" she declared, with an
+emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she
+caught herself up, and said gayly to me, "And where's that house you
+were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?"
+
+"I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet," said I.
+
+"Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me."
+
+"We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ."
+
+"Oh, I am no--tenderfoot, don't you call them?" She whipped out her
+pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+
+This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+behind it. "My!" he said, at length, almost in a whisper, "she's got the
+drop on me!"
+
+"I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours," said Miss Buckner.
+"But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards." And
+she handed it to him for inspection.
+
+He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. "My!"
+he murmured again. "Why, shucks!" He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said with
+pride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professional
+drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun."
+
+"You'd not trade, though," said she, "for all your flattery."
+
+"Will yu' trade?" pounced Lin. "Won't yu'?"
+
+"Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like
+me ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?"
+
+"She knows the brands, too!" cried Lin, in ecstasy. "See here," he
+remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, "we're losing time
+right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+lady, and I'll bring her along."
+
+I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
+office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held
+the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing,
+and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to
+the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a
+cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs,
+and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so
+I helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurried
+ourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went
+out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away
+skulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of the
+somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.
+
+As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and
+on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, "Did he know?"
+
+Lin hesitated.
+
+"You did know!" she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, "I reckon you don't
+like to have to tell folks bad news."
+
+It was I that now hesitated.
+
+"Not to a strange girl, anyway!" said she. "Well, now I have good news
+to tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you
+knew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things
+can't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about
+this world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left
+home five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's
+grandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize
+bad companions when they came around. See that!" She showed me a paper,
+taking it out like a precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a
+pardon signed by Governor Barker. "And the Governor has let me carry
+it to Nate myself. He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. The
+Governor was real kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate must
+have a mustache by now?" said she to Lin.
+
+"Yes," Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, "he has got a
+mustache all right."
+
+"He'll be glad to see you," said I, for something to say.
+
+"Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?" she asked
+Lin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It
+was plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I
+was already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse
+to tell her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+
+So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that
+"we" had before us, and that lay between her and Nate. "We would be
+four--herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy." Was Billy the one at
+supper? Oh no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. "He's a kid I'm taking up
+the country," Lin explained. "Ain't you most tuckered out?"
+
+"Oh, me!" she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+
+There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing
+Lin should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep
+in the agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back
+into the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness
+she had shown me before.
+
+"Come out!" she cried, laughing. "Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you
+ever so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--a
+cowboy!" And she glanced at Lin. "They're calling forty-seven," she
+added to the agent.
+
+"That's me," he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. "So you're
+one of us?"
+
+"I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ," said I. "How in the world do
+you know that?"
+
+"I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them
+from his room."
+
+"Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?" inquired the proud and smiling
+McLean.
+
+"Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+coming through on a special engine?"
+
+"Please don't say it out loud!" quavered the agent, as the machine
+clicked its news.
+
+"Yu' needn't be scared of a girl," said Lin. "Another sheriff! So
+they're not quit bothering us yet."
+
+However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a
+sheriff sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas,
+said to be at the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations
+beyond, and the engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here
+was no molesting of Separ's liberties.
+
+"All the same," Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+corrals, "the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here," he urged
+to the girl. But she would not. "Well, then, we must rustle some other
+private place for you. How's the section-house?"
+
+"Rank," said the agent, "since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself."
+
+"Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!" said I.
+
+"An empty?" she cried. "Is there a clean one?"
+
+"You've sure never done that?" Lin burst out.
+
+"So you're scandalized," said she, punishing him instantly. "I reckon it
+does take a decent girl to shock you." And while she stood laughing
+at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no
+offence. "Why, to be sure you didn't!" said she. "But I do enjoy you
+real thoroughly."
+
+"Well, m'm," protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to
+addressing her as "ma'am," "we ain't used--"
+
+"Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant
+no offense," she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+protector, "because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+about an empty. That will be rich--if I can have the door shut."
+
+Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering "Shucks!"
+while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: "Her name's Jessamine. She
+told me. Don't yu' like that name?" So I answered him, "Yes, very much,"
+thinking that some larger flower--but still a flower--might have been
+more apt.
+
+"Nobody seems to have slept in these," said she, stepping down; and on
+learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+"What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if
+you had a Louavull an' Nashvull car," said she. "Twould seem like my old
+Kentucky home!" And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held
+the lamp up to read the car's lettering. "'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's
+a way-off stranger! I reckon they're all strange." She went along the
+train with her lamp. "Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is
+rich! Nate will laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's
+a little nearer my country. What time does the stage start? Porter,
+please wake 'C., B. and Q.' at six, sharp," said she to Lin.
+
+From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings--their
+doings--with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can
+ever happen again, I know; for it's all gone--settled, sobered, and
+gone. And whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup,
+how I thank my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in
+time for!
+
+To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a
+good shake-down--clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+not resist--what do you suppose?--a looking-glass for next morning!
+And we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to her,
+she said, in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by all
+means, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety better
+so; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began spreading
+straw and blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and long,
+and its tone rose in pitch as it came.
+
+"I'll get him to run right to the corrals," said the agent, "so the
+sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them."
+
+"That'll convince 'em he is," said Lin. "Stop him here, or let him go
+through."
+
+But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails
+of the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the
+headlight grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at
+the corrals chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the
+coming engine heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met
+and mixed with the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached
+together like a sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars,
+where I heard Lin ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could
+see the agent running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal
+with as much coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very short
+space for wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed
+suddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the
+place. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging
+against their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust
+coiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the
+glare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered
+around it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep
+breaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came
+out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising
+shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by
+the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so
+precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only
+look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the
+engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making
+boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor
+joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his pistol drawn, to
+keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on the lever, the
+fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and descended
+and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured
+eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his errand, when
+some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to get down
+and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he named the
+sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and the new
+yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations, they
+swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
+step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in
+this silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and
+they all looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there
+on the threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind
+her, and touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine
+Buckner.
+
+"Will you gentlemen do me a favor?" said she. "Strangers, maybe, have
+no right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For
+I'm real sleepy!" She smiled as she brought this out. "I've been four
+days and nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo.
+You see I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want
+boys to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till
+to-morrow night?"
+
+In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among
+them, and that some word was passing through their groups. After the
+brief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their
+horses, while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the
+sheriff and engineer remained as they were.
+
+"Good-night, lady," said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the
+others kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed
+away to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern
+chaps, passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light
+in front of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and
+there a faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing
+column a bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the
+doorway, and then was gone again into the dimness.
+
+The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine
+moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an
+exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and,
+with all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely
+as the sheriff steamed by.
+
+"I ain't a-going to chase it," said young Billy, struggling.
+
+"I've a mind to cowhide you," said Lin.
+
+But Miss Buckner interposed. "Oh, well," said she, "next time; if he
+does it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that
+way again if he lets you off?" she asked Billy.
+
+"No," said Billy, looking at her with interest. "Father 'd have cowhided
+me anyway, I guess," he added, meditatively.
+
+"Do you call him father?"
+
+"Ah, father's at Laramie," said Billy, with disgust. "He'd not stop for
+your asking. Lin don't bother me much."
+
+"You quit talking and step up there!" ordered his guardian. "Well, m'm,
+I guess yu' can sleep good now in there."
+
+"If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.--"
+
+"I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin."
+
+"I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a
+ride together. Pleasant dreams!"
+
+She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+it, remarking: "I like her. What makes her live in a car?"
+
+But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who
+took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One
+distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left
+our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off,
+when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his
+stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then
+leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in
+expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he
+slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas
+boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than
+keeping a watch on it. "So I gave him to understand," said Lin, "that I
+had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that
+I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for
+his system." After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the
+night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from
+Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join
+his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually
+good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown,
+unthanked young sentinel. "Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till
+they get their growth," was his single observation.
+
+But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage
+I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note
+that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see
+him upon her return, to thank him.
+
+"Any Jack can walk around all night," said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+
+"Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't," observed the young lady.
+
+This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that
+when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in
+at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the
+hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+
+But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside
+her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold
+her.
+
+Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look
+so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does
+not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man
+and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his
+watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she
+smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing
+swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.
+
+And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+
+"I know this road," piped Billy, on the box
+
+"'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take
+a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains."
+
+So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+
+"Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.
+What made Lin marry mother when father was around?"
+
+The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
+that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met
+her on Bear Creek.
+
+The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used to
+have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman
+can have a lot of husbands?"
+
+"It don't especially depend on the place," remarked the driver to me.
+
+"Because," Billy went on, "Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd
+had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and
+I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too,
+only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert
+wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he
+come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and
+he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?"
+
+"No, Billy, you're not," I said.
+
+"Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go.
+You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many
+are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen
+mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin
+ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if
+he does," said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, "I'll quit him and
+skip."
+
+"No danger, Bill," said I.
+
+"How would the nice lady inside please you?" inquired the driver.
+
+"Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!" sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+"She's after her brother. She's all right, though," he added,
+approvingly.
+
+At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now
+spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+
+Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding
+as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant
+war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his
+relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to
+the facts of his mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoing
+cynic, "folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this
+country!" But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next
+station carefully lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too,"
+he whispered to me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We
+laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused,
+as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept
+sound between us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out
+of that don't make soberness for somebody."
+
+Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at
+our next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she did
+not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+
+Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her
+eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks
+white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me
+that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold.
+I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart
+understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow
+puncher, standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully
+and spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre
+emotion; but the court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and,
+as plain as if he had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be
+stared at going up those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the
+joy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silent
+steps said, "Wasted! all wasted!"
+
+"Let us hope--" I began.
+
+"You're not a fool," he broke in, roughly. "You don't hope anything."
+
+"He'll start life elsewhere," said I.
+
+"Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it
+into money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have
+just bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!" Lin brought
+up with a comical chuckle. "And she went to work, and he cleared out,
+and no more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given
+up tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows
+he's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and
+starts for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York,
+till she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had
+to go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the
+money he stole." We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone
+into the quick little river. "She's awful strict in some ways. Thought
+Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday.
+Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is
+mostly sin. But her heart is a shield for Nate."
+
+"Her face is as beautiful as her actions," he added.
+
+"Well," said I, "and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?"
+
+He whirled round and took both my shoulders. "Come walking!" he urged.
+"I must talk some." So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+mountains. "I came awful near asking her in the stage," said he.
+
+"Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!"
+
+"Time can't increase my feelings."
+
+"Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?"
+
+"Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can
+be so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard.
+And everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending
+to speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and
+finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek
+better than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved."
+
+"Then I'd like to ask--" I cried out.
+
+"Ask away!" he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+
+"When you--" but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of
+course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his
+substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he
+not married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I
+stopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.
+
+And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my
+mind.
+
+"No," he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, "don't you ask about
+the things you're meaning." Then his face grew radiant and rather
+stern. "Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some
+bygones can't ever be bygones? But if you," he said, "never come to look
+away up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as
+if you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole
+business!"
+
+When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is
+not true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all
+plants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen
+misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the
+saddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the
+ordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility
+had been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have
+been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and
+this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. "Lin," said
+I, "I will drink your health and luck."
+
+"I'm healthy enough," said he; and we came back to the main street and
+into the main saloon.
+
+"How d'ye, boys?" said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. "It's on me
+to-day," he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was
+a little drunk. "I'm setting 'em up," he continued. "Why? Why,
+because"--he looked around for appreciation--"because it's not every
+son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important,
+I want you to understand," he pursued to the cold bystanders. "They'll
+have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder
+River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks
+he knows how to break a colt," he shouted, looking around with the
+irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in
+laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. "You're not drinking, Lin,"
+said he.
+
+"No," said McLean, "I'm not."
+
+"Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me."
+
+"Yu' never gave water the chance," retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+the place without my having drunk his health.
+
+It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+with the jail door scarce closed behind him. "Folks are not going to
+like that," said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel.
+Yet the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle
+their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a
+Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working.
+All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her
+on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful
+cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and
+dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights;
+but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea,
+shaven clean, with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner
+to Jessamine were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean,
+so that I observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+
+"Oh, no jealousy!" said he. "But he comes in and kisses her, and
+he kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such
+oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I
+expect she must have some of her savings left."
+
+It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her;
+and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that
+dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed
+some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to
+visit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he
+spoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of
+brother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held
+himself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then
+merely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of Nate
+Buckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sister
+was all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared
+criminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing
+loudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister sat
+close and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world to
+see. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back from
+some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemed
+more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.
+
+At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun
+draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream
+comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along
+the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that
+we saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of
+light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern
+masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and
+amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about
+the levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the
+brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I
+heard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had
+he been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and
+dashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment
+than he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a
+horse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. "Do you remember
+when I used to hold the pony for you to get on?" she said. "You always
+would scare me, Nate!" And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see
+that horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and
+she would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had been
+absent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin,
+where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was
+right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.
+
+"They don't know how to handle that horse," said he. "I told you so.
+Give me a rope."
+
+Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only
+was their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+been in the Buffalo saloon.
+
+"The trick is easy enough," said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+liking an audience. "You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by
+the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit
+their fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!"
+
+He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when
+the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged
+swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its
+feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the
+saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely,
+and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise
+to silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden
+towards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until
+the head sank on the horse's rump.
+
+"Come away," said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed
+and went, leaning on his arm.
+
+Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse
+had crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly
+unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in
+the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this
+world that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking
+him home, which his sister at first wished to do. "Why, I came here to
+bring him home," she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in
+wax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and
+she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she
+saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was
+Lin gave her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence.
+He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about
+the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was
+said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from
+some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her
+tell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the
+same authority of that first "come away"; "Now you've had enough of
+the talking. Come for a walk." Enough of the talking--as if it were
+a treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again
+obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and
+along the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only
+point did the cow-puncher consult me.
+
+"They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound," said he. "But
+she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and
+where she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at
+him to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.
+But I'd like to show you my idea before going further."
+
+Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+sight of it.
+
+"That's all I wanted to know," said he. "I'll fix the rest."
+
+I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far
+as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour
+to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and
+sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate
+laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those
+walks.
+
+But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east,
+he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could
+not have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be
+debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did
+so. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to
+be made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning
+he and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined
+Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on
+Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.
+
+But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+
+Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful,
+serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom
+your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it
+froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+
+
+                           "Wensday four a. m.
+
+"DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You
+will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner
+of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss
+J. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor
+accommodations.
+
+                           "Yours &c.     L. McLEAN."
+
+
+This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound)
+that this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give
+herself to a lover was distasteful to me.
+
+But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and
+she was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank
+surprise at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from
+her lips, at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as
+to her opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from
+them.
+
+"Let us talk straight," said I. "Do you mean that Miss Buckner says
+that, or that you say it?"
+
+"Why, the poor thing says nothing!" exclaimed the lady. "It's like a man
+to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all
+just the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to
+know what I think of him next time we meet."
+
+He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy
+in the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we
+did not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle
+or cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her
+loneliness had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+
+Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable
+roof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in
+the hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung
+to the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when
+I told her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked
+to the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one
+life-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the
+receding town and mountains. "It's awful to be leaving him!" she said.
+"Excuse me for acting so in front of you." With the poignant emptiness
+overcoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in
+Illinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he
+must have gone with her.
+
+How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+come to him? But I said: "You know you don't think it was your fault.
+You know you would do the same again." She listened to me, but her eyes
+had no interest in them. "He never knew pain," I pursued, "and he died
+doing the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying
+himself, and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk
+religion, but I can't."
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you
+for saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want
+it--to hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly."
+
+During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the
+wounds of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no higher
+sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers.
+Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that
+was in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements
+brought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when
+at last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at
+the suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped
+out of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed
+and beamed.
+
+"So I went away without telling you goodbye!" he began, not wisely.
+"Mrs. Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!"
+
+The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. "Indeed? There was no special
+obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't."
+
+"Oh!" said Lin, crestfallen. "Yu' sure don't mean that?"
+
+She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. "No, neighbor, I don't
+mean it."
+
+"Neighbor!" he exclaimed; and again, "Neighbor," much pleased. "Now it
+would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing."
+
+"It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you."
+
+"Blamed if I understand her," cried Lin. "Blamed if I do. But you're
+going to understand me sure quick!" He rushed inside the station, spoke
+sharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that
+had pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed
+near bursting. "I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter,
+and I expect I know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here." He took
+it from the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. "You
+needn't to fear. Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!"
+He watched it in her hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a
+Christmas parcel he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully
+untie. "Open it," he urged again. "Keeping me waiting this way!"
+
+"What in the world does all this mean?" cried Jessamine, stopping short
+at the first sentence.
+
+"Read," said Lin.
+
+"You've done this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Read, read!"
+
+So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss
+Buckner might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she
+was willing to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her
+way east, and talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more
+than she had been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she
+could continue east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent
+believed the salary could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to
+find an order for a free ride to Edgeford.
+
+Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. "You did do this," she
+repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+
+"Yes," said he. "And I am plumb proud of it."
+
+She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+stopped. "Did anybody ever!" she said.
+
+"We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"Oh no! oh no!" Jessamine declared. "Though how am I ever to thank you?"
+
+"By not argufying," Lin answered.
+
+"Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+are crazy."
+
+"I've been waiting to hear yu' say that," said the complacent McLean.
+"I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an
+hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it."
+
+"And I expect I'll go, too," said the girl.
+
+"I'll be plumb proud to have yu'," the cow-puncher assented.
+
+"I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now," said Jessamine, again
+laughing, sunny and defiant.
+
+"You bet you are!" said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into
+the station serenely. "You can't get used to new ideas in a minute," he
+remarked to me. "I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,"
+he broke out, impetuously, "I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When
+she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll
+you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just
+knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble
+inconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but
+how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some
+Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till
+that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after
+Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who
+talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival
+yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would
+find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in
+two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is
+goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in
+the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they
+all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after
+writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on
+that ride!" (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) "Got to Separ. Got
+the sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held up
+the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to
+the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in
+charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. But
+Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent.
+'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his two
+hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up and
+down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay right
+along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle and
+your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from Separ if yu'
+went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a man couldn't
+do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would be
+respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct the
+business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began to
+soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wise
+as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her."
+
+"Well," said I, "you deserve success after thinking of a thing like
+that! You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago.
+By eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent."
+
+"Why, so she will!" said Lin, affecting surprise.
+
+He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination
+of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly
+failed to gratify her.
+
+Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, "I hope I shall
+see Mr. Donohoe."
+
+"Texas?" said Lin. "I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet."
+
+"He can walk round a freight-car all night," said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+"I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me."
+
+Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+
+"Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!" cried out
+Jessamine "Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why,
+Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can't
+remember!"
+
+"Shucks!" began Lin.
+
+But her laughter routed him. "Maybe you didn't notice you were young,"
+she said. "But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe
+even the girls kind o' did!"
+
+"She's hard to beat, ain't she?" inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+
+In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found
+him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say
+good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and
+repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said
+the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the
+treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she
+made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+
+"Don't you ride any more cow-catchers," she warned Billy Lusk, "or I'll
+have to come back and look after you."
+
+"You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't," shouted
+the long-memoried nine-year-old. "You will," murmured Mr. McLean,
+oracularly.
+
+As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner
+cried "Jump!"
+
+"Too late," said he, placidly. Then he called to me, "I'm hard to beat,
+too!" So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+intention all along.
+
+"Is that marriage again?" said Billy, anxiously. "He wouldn't tell me
+nothing."
+
+"He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford," said the agent. "Be
+back to-morrow."
+
+"Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along," Billy complained. And
+Separ laughed.
+
+But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep
+was unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town.
+Separ lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a
+while. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be
+sifted through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+
+That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+the Eastern States.
+
+"It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+to us," said the Virginian.
+
+"We can't tell him good-bye," said Honey Wiggin. "Separ'll be slow."
+
+"We can give his successor a right hearty welcome," the Virginian
+suggested.
+
+"That's you!" said Honey. "Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're
+the leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm."
+
+"Yes," drawled the Southerner, "that's what I'm aiming to do."
+
+So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean.
+He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+casual.
+
+"Bring your new wife?" they inquired.
+
+"No; she preferred Kentucky," Lin said.
+
+"Bring the old one?"
+
+"No; she preferred Laramie."
+
+"Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl," said the
+Virginian.
+
+"Sure!" said Mr. McLean. "I quit at Edgeford."
+
+He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle
+had gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+
+But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from
+its lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, "You'll see her
+to-morrow if you go in with the outfit." Then, looking round to
+make sure we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket,
+cherishingly, a little shining pistol. "Hers," said he, simply.
+
+I looked at him.
+
+"We've exchanged," he said.
+
+He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night
+when Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+
+"My idea," he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. "See
+this, too."
+
+I looked, and there was the word "Neighbor" engraved on it.
+
+"Her idea," said he.
+
+"A good one!" I murmured.
+
+"It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+the superintendent's proposition." Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. "She can beat that with mine!" he
+exclaimed, proud and tender. "She took four days deciding at Edgeford,
+and I learned her to hit the ace of clubs." He showed me the cards they
+had practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in
+a book as if they were pressed flowers. "They won't get crumpled that
+way," said he; and he further showed me a tintype. "She's got the other
+at Separ," he finished.
+
+I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+Kentucky. "But how in the world," I asked him, "did you persuade her to
+stop over at Edgeford at all?"
+
+"Yu' mustn't forget," said the lover (and he blushed), "that I had her
+four hours alone on the train."
+
+But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was
+a joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on.
+He suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change
+at Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+
+"We mostly take their tricks," observed the Virginian.
+
+"Yes," said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, "that's so, too."
+
+Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of
+legend--more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and
+no serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and
+copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear
+like rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or
+in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and
+leaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door
+stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped
+in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped
+rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling
+up for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his
+grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: "Why, excuse me, ma'am!
+Good-morning."
+
+There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place,
+and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging
+water-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+
+The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+removed its foolish hat.
+
+"Good-morning, gentlemen," said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+
+"If you have any letters, ma'am," said the Virginian, more inventive,
+"I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's." He knew the judge's office
+was seventy miles from here.
+
+"Any for the C. Y.?" muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+
+It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+letters ever came for these names!
+
+There was no letter for any one present.
+
+"I'm sorry, truly," said Jessamine behind the railing. "For you seemed
+real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand
+things yet."
+
+"Yes, m'm."
+
+"Good-day, m'm."
+
+"Thank yu', m'm."
+
+They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+
+"No, she don't understand things yet," soliloquized the Virginian. "Oh
+dear, no." He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. "You Lin McLean," said
+he, in his gentle voice, "you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+mawnin'."
+
+Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly
+and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I,
+and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+
+Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean "'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+for a six-shooter as ever I heard," said he. "But she'll never have need
+of your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she
+hearkens to your courtin'."
+
+That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. "Plumb strange,"
+he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, "how a man
+will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one."
+
+"Your hair seems black as ever," said I.
+
+"My hopes ain't so glossy any more," he answered. "Lin has done better
+this second trip."
+
+"Mrs. Lusk don't count," said I.
+
+"I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky." And the Virginian
+fell silent again.
+
+Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a
+good shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They
+would have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one
+or another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters,
+and brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin,
+more original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an
+ace of clubs. "I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a
+shootin'-match," he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more
+objectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents of
+game--antelope, sage-chickens--but, shyness intervening, he left them
+outside the door, and entering, dressed in all the "Sunday" that he had,
+would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emerging
+from one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of his
+tormentors.
+
+"If she don't notice your clothes, Texas," said the Virginian, "just
+mention them to her."
+
+"Now yer've done offended her," shrilled Manassas Donohoe. "She heard
+that."
+
+"She'll hear you singin' sooprano," said Honey Wiggin. "It's good this
+country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+corrupt your morals."
+
+"You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man," observed the
+Virginian. "Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass."
+
+But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no
+one. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he
+had gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But
+more than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye
+to Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a
+wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. "She can have it," he told me. "I like
+her." Then he stole a look at his guardian. "If they get married and
+send me back to mother," said he, "I'll run away sure." So school and
+this old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky,
+who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his
+hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted
+chickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen
+at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them
+with equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.
+
+"This time right!" he exclaimed. "And I want her to know Billy some more
+before he goes to Bear Creek."
+
+"Ah, Bear Creek!" said Billy, acidly. "Why can't I stay home?"
+
+"Home sounds kind o' slick," said Lin to me. "Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral,
+and ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're
+good, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her
+about Laramie."
+
+Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+angrily to the corral.
+
+Lin nudged me, laughing. "I can rile him every time about Laramie," said
+he, affectionately. "I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store
+by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What
+do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--right
+after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says to
+me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about her
+brother and her sorrow." Lin paused. "And about me. I can't never tell
+you--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all
+that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't
+anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was
+your son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she
+ever gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless
+her!"
+
+As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: "I
+didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!"
+
+"Well, well, kid," said the cow-puncher, patting his head, "yu' needn't
+to, I guess."
+
+But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention
+to the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we
+went over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots,
+a rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently
+on one.
+
+"Scanty room for company!" Jessamine said. "But we must make out this
+way--till we have another way." She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face
+darkened. "Do you know," she pursued to me, "with all those chickens Mr.
+McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here."
+
+"Livin' or dead do you want 'em?" inquired Lin.
+
+"Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--"
+
+"Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!" And we all laughed
+together.
+
+"You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?" spoke Billy, suddenly,
+from his stool.
+
+"I'd like to see anybody try to make you?" exclaimed Jessamine. "Who
+says any such thing?"
+
+"Lin did," said Billy.
+
+Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. "What a way to tease him!"
+she said. "And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!"
+
+"I never thought," said Lin the boisterous. "I wouldn't have."
+
+"Come sit here, Billy," said Jessamine. "Whenever he teases, you tell
+me, and we'll make him behave."
+
+"Honest?" persisted Billy.
+
+"Shake hands on it," said Jessamine.
+
+"Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?"
+
+"Honest! Honest!" And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+
+"Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either," stated
+Billy, relieved.
+
+Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+
+"Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her."
+
+Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+
+"It's simple," said the cow-puncher. "It's all right."
+
+But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+
+"It's all right," repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+looking down. "Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual."
+
+"Billy?" whispered Jessamine. "Then you--But his name is Lusk!"
+
+"Course it is," said Billy. "Father and mother are living in Laramie."
+
+"It's all straight," said the cow-puncher. "I never saw her till three
+years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come
+easy to tell."
+
+I rose. "Miss Buckner," said I, "he will tell you. But he will not tell
+you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.
+It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten."
+
+But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on
+Lin, and her face remained white.
+
+I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets
+to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile
+I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith,
+ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could
+have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had
+it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with
+something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched
+the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow,
+seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of
+the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and
+near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window
+were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose
+the water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a
+Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I
+heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he
+walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.
+
+"She's a-crying," said he.
+
+I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: "I'm
+sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+sat, and when she started crying he made me go away."
+
+"I don't believe she's mad," I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the
+plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young
+Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he
+who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.
+But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened,
+and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him
+and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the
+door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
+
+"What?" I said at length.
+
+I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him
+gently. "Wake, son," said he. "You and I must get to our camp now."
+
+"Now?" said Billy. "Can't we wait till morning?"
+
+"No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+saddles on." As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. "She is
+in there," he said. "She's in there. So near." He looked, and turned to
+the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on.
+"I understand her words," he continued. "Her words, the meaning of them.
+But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she
+don't blame me!" he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+
+"Lin," I answered, "she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile."
+
+"That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and
+she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I
+didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and
+she never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open,
+but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so
+long--and I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands;
+but she says I have a wife livin'."
+
+"That is nonsense," I declared.
+
+"Yu' mustn't say that," said he. "She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+that she's honest, and loves me true--" His voice broke for a moment.
+"She said she'd wait."
+
+"You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied," I said. "But
+perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--"
+
+"No," said the cow-puncher. "Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it
+in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and
+the chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and
+waked Billy to clear out and quit."
+
+"What did you tell her?" I asked.
+
+"Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!"
+
+"Man, man!" said I, "go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll
+wait too--always!"
+
+"Would yu'?"
+
+"Look!" I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+
+I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its
+black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into
+the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in
+the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she
+was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole
+loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her
+would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while
+Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again
+and folded her in his arms.
+
+"Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!" she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+last good-bye.
+
+I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black,
+standing over Separ.
+
+
+
+
+
+DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to
+ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
+and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not
+guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine
+it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss
+Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never
+yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.
+Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.
+McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well,
+and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She
+was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable
+nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at
+Separ, and "yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'" Postscript. Talking
+of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send
+Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the
+ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She
+knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with
+the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to
+Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine
+wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy
+of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer
+to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve
+pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by
+Mr. McLean.
+
+"I can write a lot quicker than Lin," said Billy, upon arriving. "He was
+fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling
+in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
+the cabin for my clothes."
+
+"You don't say!" said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
+again.
+
+When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely
+at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.
+But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+
+Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. "Honey
+Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls," he remarked. "He says
+you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey
+says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times."
+
+"Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right," said Jessamine, buoyantly.
+"And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till
+it clears, and then we'll go for our ride."
+
+"Yes," said Billy. "When does a man get too old to marry?"
+
+"I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know."
+
+"Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess
+he must be thirty."
+
+"Old!" exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her
+table.
+
+"But Lin ain't been married very much," pursued Billy. "Mother's the
+only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?"
+
+"It's better to," said Jessamine.
+
+"Ah, I don't think so," said Billy, with disparagement. "You ought to
+see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,"
+said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. "Why won't you
+if he don't mind?"
+
+She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
+eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph
+called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to
+inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour
+teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was
+refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was
+still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.
+
+"Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you." He was at the
+window, kicking the wall.
+
+"That's nine times since dinner," she replied, with tireless good humor.
+"Now if you ask me twelve--"
+
+"You'll tell?" said the boy, swiftly.
+
+She broke into a laugh. "No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home.
+When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me
+three times."
+
+"I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!"
+
+"Better save 'em up, though."
+
+"What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty
+all over." He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been
+tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the
+dust like a sea. "I wish the old train would come," observed Billy,
+continuing to kick the wall. "I wish I was going somewheres." Smoky,
+level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred
+unbroken miles. The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute
+the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above
+this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose
+bulging into the clear sun. The sand spirals would lick like flames
+along the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward. It was not shipping
+season. The freight-cars stood idle in a long line. No cattle huddled in
+the corrals. No strangers moved in town. No cow-ponies dozed in front of
+the saloon. Their riders were distant in ranch and camp. Human noise was
+extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place
+lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. "Why won't you tell me?" droned
+Billy. For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed
+away.
+
+"That's ten times," said Jessamine, promptly.
+
+"Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+less glad now."
+
+"Well," said Jessamine, "there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+ask him?"
+
+Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+make a direct rejoinder. "I guess I'll go outside now," said he, with a
+threat in his tone.
+
+She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one
+side of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+
+"And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the
+freight-cars," he stated, more loudly.
+
+She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+restraint.
+
+"And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!" he shouted. "Just as
+if I was a baby."
+
+"Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?"
+
+"All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me--"
+
+"Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to
+tell them?"
+
+"That's not a bit the same, because--because--because I treat 'em square
+and because it's not their business. But every time I ask anybody 'most
+anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and I'll be ten
+soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a mother I'm
+agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em, when they
+bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I had. Guess
+I will, too, and watch 'em step around." For a moment his mind dwelt
+upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+
+"Goodness, Billy!" said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking.
+"The whole heel is scorched off."
+
+He eyed the ruin with indifference. "Ah, that was last month when I
+and Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs.
+Chuck it away."
+
+"And spoil the pair? No, indeed!"
+
+"Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped
+from home. Lin kind o' mends 'em."
+
+"Does he?" said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+
+"Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+and things?"
+
+"Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd
+be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?"
+
+"Oh!" Billy pondered. "And so I said to Lin," he continued, "why didn't
+he send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey
+Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the
+cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she
+chucked 'em like she always did father's and mine. I was with father,
+you know, when mother was married to Lin that time." He paused again,
+while his thoughts and fears struggled. "But Lin says I needn't ever
+go back," he went on, reasoning and confiding to her. "Lin don't like
+mother any more, I guess." His pondering grew still deeper, and he
+looked at Jessamine for some while. Then his face wakened with a new
+theory. "Don't Lin like you any more?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh," cried Jessamine, crimsoning, "yes! Why, he sent you to me!"
+
+"Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you
+any more."
+
+"Why, I hope he loves me," murmured Jessamine. "Always."
+
+"Well, I hope so too," said Billy, earnestly. "For I like you. When I
+seen him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed
+for you, I was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be
+awful. I wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things.
+Ah, pshaw! I wasn't going to stand that." Billy now came close to
+Jessamine. "I do wish you would come and live with me and Lin," said he.
+"Lin's awful nice."
+
+"Don't I know it?" said Jessamine, tenderly.
+
+"Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him," went on Billy.
+"And I seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you
+found out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing
+happens at all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?"
+
+Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was
+not going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever
+things she had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+
+Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train,
+and the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties
+behind the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the
+window to watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed
+out from the yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then
+with steam and humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long
+dust-choked train emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted.
+There was no one to go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The
+conductor looked in on business, but she had no telegraphic orders
+for him. The express agent jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He
+received his daily smile and nod of friendly discouragement. Then the
+light bundle of mail was flung inside the door. Separ had no mail to
+go out. As she was picking up the letters young Billy passed her like a
+shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had descended from the train, a man
+and a large woman. His clothes were loose and careless upon him. He held
+valises, and stood uncertainly looking about him in the storm. Her
+firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her hat was a large, handsome
+feather. Along between the several cars brakemen leaned out, watched
+her, and grinned to each other. But her big, hard-shining blue eyes were
+fixed curiously upon the station where Jessamine was.
+
+"It's all night we may be here, is it?" she said to the man, harshly.
+
+"How am I to help that?" he retorted.
+
+"I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek."
+
+She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+
+"Good-evening," he said. "Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here."
+
+"For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+pole-wagon at Drybone."
+
+This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out
+and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because
+Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+
+"Governor Barker has not been around here?" he said.
+
+"Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip."
+
+"I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?"
+
+"I reckon so, sir." Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself
+out. Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was
+mostly achieved thus, in amity.
+
+On the platform the man found his wife again.
+
+"Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's," she said. "And we'll eat as we
+travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her." She made a gesture
+toward the station.
+
+"Why--why--what do you want with her. Don't you know who she is?"
+
+"It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+of her talks to the likes of me."
+
+He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+
+"Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it
+was you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this
+country to have a look at my old friends--and" (she laughed loudly and
+nodded at the station) "my old friends' new friends!"
+
+Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+
+Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned
+to her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and
+heard a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the
+large woman with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the
+stranger spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was
+something of threat in the strong animal countenance, something of
+laughter ready to break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been
+in the face, and now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag
+look of assertion that it was still all there. Many stranded travellers
+knocked at Jessamine's door, and now, as always, she offered the
+hospitalities of her neat abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman.
+As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and listened, the door blew shut
+with a crash.
+
+Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+father.
+
+"How you have grown!" the man was saying; and he smiled. "Come, shake
+hands. I did not think to see you here."
+
+"Dare you to touch me!" Billy screamed. "No, I'll never come with you.
+Lin says I needn't to."
+
+The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the
+wheel. "Lord, Lord!" he muttered.
+
+His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in
+his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were
+there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved
+together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered
+in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and
+golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the
+greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered
+the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel
+of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the
+trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the
+cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.
+Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,
+sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by
+his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney
+into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the
+afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher
+sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were
+not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of
+him--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with
+bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently
+he lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word "Neighbor"
+engraved upon it.
+
+"I wonder," said he, aloud, "if she keeps the rust off mine?" Then he
+lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word "Neighbor."
+
+The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but
+no one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little
+distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for
+the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they
+came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat
+down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in
+silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with
+good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the
+eye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now,
+upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled
+upon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to
+everything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead
+noise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung
+low. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into
+his face and went away.
+
+"Good-evening," said he, clearing his throat. "We heard you was in
+cow-camp."
+
+The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change
+crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs
+out as he sat.
+
+"You look natural," said the woman, familiarly.
+
+"Seem to be fixed nice here," continued the man. "Hadn't heard of it.
+Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you."
+
+"Your wheel wants greasing," said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+
+"Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening."
+
+"Stay to supper," said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+
+"Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone." He twitched
+the reins.
+
+McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. "Better
+stay to supper," he suggested, very distinctly.
+
+"It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before
+he--"
+
+The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. "Better
+stay to supper," drawled McLean.
+
+The man looked up at his wife.
+
+"So yus need me!" she broke out. "Ain't got heart enough in yer
+played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down."
+
+The husband stepped to the ground. "I didn't suppose you'd want--"
+
+"Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out."
+
+Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her
+blue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+
+"No, yus ain't changed," she said. "Same in your looks and same in your
+actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?"
+
+"I just wanted chickens for supper," said he.
+
+Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. "I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.
+As for--" She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+"Neighbor." "As for you," she continued to Mr. Lusk, "don't you be
+standing dumb same as the horse."
+
+"Better take him to the stable, Lusk," said McLean.
+
+He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his
+room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his
+guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he
+was, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down
+in the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he
+made ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the
+setting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host
+looked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal was
+served, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back
+to him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced
+something. He saw that she had been examining "Neighbor," and his face
+hardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated
+quietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down to
+their meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from one
+or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch and
+mentioned the hour.
+
+"Yu've not ate especially hearty," said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+table.
+
+"I'm going," asserted Lusk. "Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+interests to look after."
+
+"Why, sure," said Lin. "I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+me."
+
+Lusk rose and looked at his wife. "It'll be ten now before we get to
+Drybone," said he. And he went down to the stable.
+
+The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. "I know you seen
+me," she said, without looking at him.
+
+"Saw you when?"
+
+"I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me." She sat twisting and
+pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+that he wished to reply.
+
+"If you claim that pistol is yourn," she said next, "I'll tell you I
+know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not
+have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her."
+
+She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could
+have seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on
+his arms.
+
+"Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!" The woman uttered another
+sudden laugh. "I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in this
+world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own
+good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!" Her voice
+grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly
+resumed: "It had travelled around about you and her like it always will
+travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she
+would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about
+you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their
+lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another
+wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him
+livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could
+not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no
+hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me
+a queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her
+face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin!
+Yu' never hit me yet."
+
+"No," said the cow-puncher. "Nor now. I'm not Lusk."
+
+"Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.
+Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,
+'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!"
+
+"Yes," breathed McLean.
+
+"She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office,
+but--"
+
+"I know," the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+
+"It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+Jessamine Buckner?'"
+
+At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+flash.
+
+"And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She
+put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never
+speaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says
+she. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.
+
+"Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+
+"I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear
+Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right
+out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+
+"'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and
+hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to
+yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more
+that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.
+I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
+time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
+go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
+her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+
+"'I know," she says, thoughtful-like.
+
+"And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+
+"'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that
+you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
+the kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
+hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
+like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
+best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a
+while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss
+Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,
+Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's
+walled up for a while."
+
+"She could have told you it was a lie," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus
+wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second
+Best.'
+
+"Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+
+"And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+little "Neighbor," which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after
+his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of
+mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'
+me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy
+thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell
+her about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to
+me till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the
+rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?
+You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, not
+mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right
+now--he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of
+his! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't
+touch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for
+you hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is
+different when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they
+ain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make
+yus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their
+nature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll
+be homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and
+found another girl.'
+
+"Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin'
+at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw
+him I would tell him to find a home.'"
+
+"Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing
+her?" asked the cow-puncher.
+
+Mrs. Lusk laughed. "Oh, you innocent!" said she.
+
+"She said if I came she would leave Separ," muttered McLean, brooding.
+
+Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+
+"I have kept my promise," Lin continued.
+
+"Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+Maybe she's gone."
+
+"What's that?" said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. "I could
+be there by to-morrow night," he murmured. Then his face softened. "She
+would never do such a thing!" he said, to himself.
+
+He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+beauty relighted the features.
+
+"You are the same, same Lin everyways," she said. "A woman is too many
+for you still, Lin!" she whispered.
+
+At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+
+"Lin, I would not have treated you so."
+
+The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+
+"You!" he said. "At least I've had plenty of education in you."
+
+"Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+
+"I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in
+you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come
+to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and
+you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so
+comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon.
+Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?"
+
+"I can't hardly say," said the cow-puncher. "Only noticing him so
+turruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking."
+
+"You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were
+good times."
+
+"Which times?"
+
+"You know. You can't tell me you have forgot."
+
+"I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?"
+
+"Yus never loved me!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Shucks!"
+
+"Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+did. Only say it was once that way." And as he sat, she came and put her
+arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+after him and smiling.
+
+McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his
+hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.
+Then he continued on his way. "Lusk!" he called, presently, and in a few
+steps more, "Lusk!" Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the
+husband he began, with quiet evenness, "Your wife wants to know--" But
+he stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The
+door was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the
+road went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars
+were faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks
+as they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the
+trees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by
+sounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses
+fed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it
+again. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone
+there. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of
+the corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the
+roof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the
+vine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle
+of the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But
+he ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the
+corral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men's
+saddles--from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with
+the horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she
+had sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look
+in at the door.
+
+"Lusk has gone," said he. "I don't know what he expected you would do,
+or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone."
+
+She looked at him with her dumb stare. "Gone?" she said.
+
+"Get up and ride," said McLean. "You are going to Drybone."
+
+"Drybone?" she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+
+He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table
+clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she
+followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small
+bundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse
+beside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his
+cabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and
+be at home.
+
+She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed.
+"It's about his size," she murmured.
+
+Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--this
+they had often done together in former years--and so they took their way
+down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first
+two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to
+a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
+and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+
+"I will ask you one thing," said Lin, after ten miles.
+
+The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+
+"Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might be
+going away from Separ?"
+
+"How do I know what you understood?"
+
+"I thought you said--"
+
+"Don't you bother me, Lin McLean." Her laugh rang out, loud and
+forlorn--one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have
+sounded far across the sage-brush. "You men are rich," she said.
+
+They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over
+the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and
+presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they
+made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+
+"Put your carbine down," said McLean to Lusk. "It's not robbers. It's
+your wife I'm bringing you." He spoke very quietly.
+
+The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher "Get in, then," he said
+to his wife.
+
+"Town's not far now," said Lin. "Maybe you would prefer riding the
+balance of the way?"
+
+"I'd--" But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame
+her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+
+From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the
+road slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the
+immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the
+whole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged
+from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom
+it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of
+sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to
+breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through
+the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone
+bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank
+showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over
+the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's
+chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
+wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They
+passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings
+and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the
+sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.
+The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
+their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
+known.
+
+"There's a dance to-night," said the wife to the husband. "Hurry."
+
+He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+
+"I'm telling you to hurry," she repeated. "My new dress is in that
+wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than
+you."
+
+She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
+the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat
+and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen
+voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
+he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher
+was still less to his mind.
+
+"It ain't only her he's stopped caring for," mused Lin, as he rode
+slowly along. "He don't care for himself any more."
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day
+its hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants
+were rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male
+and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
+bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
+childhood which had set in.
+
+Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and
+foot, and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their
+captains upon its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of
+it. When the War Department ordered the captains to catch Indians,
+the wives bade them Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the
+captains to let the Indians go again, still they made the best of it.
+You must not waste Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many
+people in Washington and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians,
+armed with weapons sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was
+not entirely harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone
+graveyard. The pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it:
+"Sacred to the memory of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne,
+May 6, 1875." Or it would be, "Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage
+Creek." But even the financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve
+the Indian in Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands
+came treading with the next step of civilization into this huge domain,
+the soldiers were taken away. Some of them went West to fight more
+Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being
+done, they went East in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or
+their comrades wanted them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon
+the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which these soldiers left
+behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as were the
+tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
+empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
+cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
+sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as
+shall presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
+professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day;
+and the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead
+of guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and
+there was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old
+boots. Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow,
+ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces
+and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the
+doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for
+inside. Among the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for
+beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in
+the morning air.
+
+Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+scalping had disappeared. "Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885." Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months." This unique
+corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+
+But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
+tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
+enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
+wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
+than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
+sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
+to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
+said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
+poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
+directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
+coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
+to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
+boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
+new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
+by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
+be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
+tenant had answered.
+
+So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
+line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed
+over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
+coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
+in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally of
+Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a
+living. The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and
+instantly spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies
+full of youth and their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by
+twenties, by fifties, and out again next morning, penniless always and
+happy. And then the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each
+other till the innocents should come to town again.
+
+To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+post and corner--patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
+an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
+saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards
+at the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for
+their easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the
+fiddle at Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds
+there, the dance was being done regularly. "Regularly" meant that upon
+the conclusion of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and
+invited her to choose and it was also regular that the lady should
+choose. Beer and whiskey were the alternatives.
+
+Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see
+why his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so
+many gallant years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely
+cow-puncher sat mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+
+"Toothpick Kid is here," said he, "and Limber Jim, and the Doughie.
+You'd think he'd stay away after the trouble he--I expect that pinto is
+Jerky Bill's."
+
+"Go home!" said a hearty voice.
+
+McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+sombreness. "I'd forgot you'd be here," said he. And he sprang to the
+ground. "It's fine to see you."
+
+"Go home!" repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient
+friend's hand. "You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+
+"Yu' seem to be on hand yourself," said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+jocular, if he could.
+
+"Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then--"
+
+"Doc," interrupted Lin, "it's plumb fine to see yu'!" Again he shook
+hands.
+
+"Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I." His Excellency the Hon.
+Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a
+grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ.
+Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer
+and different questions. But he knew what he knew. "Well, Drybone's the
+same old Drybone," said he. "Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see
+how you walk nowadays."
+
+Lin took a few steps.
+
+"Pooh! I said you'd never get over it." And his Excellency beamed with
+professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the
+hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon
+he had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+
+"It shows, does it?" said Lin. "Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+I'm--when I'm--"
+
+"Down?" suggested his Excellency.
+
+"Yes, Doc. Down," the cow-puncher confessed.
+
+Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+
+Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the
+Governor's good heart. "I've got some whiskey along on the trip--Eastern
+whiskey," said he. "Come over to my room awhile."
+
+"I used to sleep all night onced," said McLean, as they went. "Then I
+come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts
+could make yu'--make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat,
+yu' know!" he stated, suddenly. "And I expect one or two in camp lately
+have not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc."
+
+Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+
+Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among
+the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard
+balls reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars
+and calm splendid dimness of the plain. "'Though every prospect pleases,
+and only man is vile,'" he quoted. "But don't tell the Republican party
+I said so."
+
+"It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+didn't know!"
+
+And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and
+nodded his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should
+have done the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never
+remembered he was Governor at all with political friends here who
+had begged a word or two. He became just Dr. Barker again, the young
+hospital surgeon (the hospital that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again
+his patient----Lin, the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless,
+engaging, disobedient, his leg broken and his heart light, with no
+Jessamine or conscience to rob his salt of its savor. While he now told
+his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled away careless as ever, and the
+crack of the billiard balls sounded as of old.
+
+"Nobody has told you about this, I expect," said the lover. He brought
+forth the little pistol, "Neighbor." He did not hand it across to
+Barker, but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the
+doctor to see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was
+half hidden in the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but
+still stood and soon drew it back. "I take it around," he said, "and
+when one of those stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she
+wants to get rid of me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when
+I'm off where it's handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I
+have to tell you what a fool I am."
+
+"The whiskey's your side," said Barker. "Go on."
+
+"But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+
+"I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know--"
+
+A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered.
+"Not been to our dance, Governor?" said he.
+
+The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this
+evening he must forego the pleasure.
+
+"It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable," said the
+coroner. "They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble
+in Drybone, but trouble comes to us--as everywhere."
+
+"Shooting," suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+
+"Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any
+in this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything."
+
+"Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey," remarked the Governor.
+
+The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health
+the matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead
+of sleeping on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next
+campaign. "Boys will be boys," said he. "They ain't pulled any guns
+to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free
+to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's
+after you," he mentioned incidentally to Lin. "He's fillin' up, and says
+he's after you." McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness.
+He wished this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the
+whiskey. He filled himself a glass. "Governor, it has my compliments,"
+said he. "Ambrosier. Honey-doo."
+
+"Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering," said Barker.
+
+"Good boys, good boys!" The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+"Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo." He settled himself
+deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+
+McLean rose abruptly. "Good-night," said he. "I'm going to Separ."
+
+"Separ!" exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. "Oh, stay with us, stay
+with us." He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+
+"You know how well I wish you," said Barker to Lin. "I'll just see you
+start."
+
+Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and
+walked toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead
+ruins loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen
+jockey cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and
+confusion were set up, and the tune broke off.
+
+"Just like old times!" said his Excellency. "Where's the dump-pile!" It
+was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to
+be screened from wandering bullets. "A man don't forget his habits,"
+declared the Governor. "Makes me feel young again."
+
+"Makes me feel old," said McLean. "Hark!"
+
+"Sounds like my name," said Barker. They listened. "Oh yes. Of course.
+That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+minute or so to finish their excitement."
+
+"I didn't hear any shooting," said McLean. "It's something, though."
+
+As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and
+the murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices
+wandered outside, calling the doctor's name.
+
+"I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip," said he. "But it's to be done, I
+suppose."
+
+They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed
+and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist,
+to be ready when the music should resume. "What is it?" they asked. "Who
+is it?" And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to
+the caresses which the partners gave them.
+
+Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+after many dances and drinks.
+
+"Here's Doc!" cried an older one.
+
+"Here's Doc!" chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+since his day. And the throng caught up the words: "Here's Doc! here's
+Doc!"
+
+In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this
+flood. Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by
+those who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear
+unfinished--versions, contradictions, a score of facts. It had been
+wolf-poison. It had been "Rough on Rats." It had been something in a
+bottle. There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker
+reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with
+wild inebriate gayety.
+
+"I must get her to her room, friends," said he.
+
+"He must get her to her room," went the word. "Leave Doc get her to her
+room." And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+
+"Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'" shouted Mrs. Lusk.... "'Buffalo Girls,' you
+fiddler!"
+
+"We'll come back," said Barker to her.
+
+"'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that
+bottle, Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!" She was holding the
+chair.
+
+"Help him!" said the crowd. "Help Doc."
+
+They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of
+ribbons, fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+
+"She has six ounces of laudanum in her," Barker told them at the top of
+his voice. "It won't wait all night."
+
+"I'm a whirlwind!" said Mrs. Lusk. "That's my game! And you done your
+share," she cried to the fiddler. "Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+Girls' once more!"
+
+She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling
+and ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some
+fiercely forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers,
+and she would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for
+her. But now she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin
+McLean. And when one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone
+to shoot him, she laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth.
+But even in the midst of the joke she asked again in the same voice
+where was Lin McLean. He came beside her among more jokes. He had kept
+himself near, and now at sight of him she reached out and held him.
+"Tell them to leave me go to sleep, Lin," said she.
+
+Barker saw a chance. "Persuade her to come along," said he to McLean.
+"Minutes are counting now."
+
+"Oh, I'll come," she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+still to Lin.
+
+The rest of the old friends nudged each other. "Back seats for us," they
+said. "But we've had our turn in front ones." Then, thinking they would
+be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering
+Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made
+its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and
+holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set
+her down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest
+gathered thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing.
+The notion to stay was plain on their faces.
+
+Barker surveyed them. "Give the doctor a show now, boys," said he.
+"You've done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you," he
+whispered to McLean.
+
+At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering
+of wind. "Don't crowd his elbows," they began to say at once, and told
+each other to come away. "We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want
+to be shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty
+near absent." The room thinned of them forthwith. "Fix her up good,
+Doc," they said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the
+threshold and porch with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one
+or other stumbled on the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet.
+"You want to tame yourself," was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye
+and Toothpick Kid came precipitately back. "Her cash," they said. And
+leaving the notes and coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on
+the way back to the dance.
+
+"I want you," repeated Barker to McLean.
+
+"Him!" cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. "Jessamine wants him about
+now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!" And she laughed her hard,
+rich laugh, looking from one to the other. "Not the two of yus can't
+save me," she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+thickness sounded.
+
+"Walk her up and down," said Barker. "Keep her moving. I'll look what
+I can find. Keep her moving brisk." At once he was out of the door; and
+before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+across the quadrangle.
+
+"'Buffalo Girls!'" exclaimed the woman. "Old times! Old times!"
+
+"Come," said McLean. "Walk." And he took her.
+
+Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
+him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
+he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
+open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark.
+But presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned
+sullen.
+
+"Walk," said McLean.
+
+"Do you think so?" said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
+with him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+
+"You're hurting me," she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. "He's gone,
+Lin," she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+
+She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+that he had set.
+
+"Leave me down. You hurt," she pleaded, hanging on him.
+
+The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+
+"Just the floor," she pleaded again. "Just one minute on the floor.
+He'll think you could not keep me lifted."
+
+Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+had undertaken.
+
+"He's playing out!" she exclaimed. "You'll be played out soon." She
+laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
+to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+"Jessamine!" she whispered to him. "Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion
+you, Lin."
+
+"Talk sense," said he.
+
+"It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll
+go; you can't--"
+
+"Walk, walk!" he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing
+his arms.
+
+"Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle--Ah, walk me to glory,
+then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for keeps.
+Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet--I'll bet she has never
+seen you look so. Let me--let me watch yus. Anyway, she knows I came
+first!"
+
+He grasped her savagely. "First! You and twenty of yu' don't--God!! what
+do I talk to her for?"
+
+"Because--because--I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off--but he had to
+sling--you can't--stop--"
+
+Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through
+deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. "Buffalo Girls!" he
+shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her
+as though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to
+wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load
+in his grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+
+Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. "So I've got
+you!" he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came
+up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+
+"Thank God!" said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged
+and encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him,
+threatened him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left
+him suddenly and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him
+here. He glanced at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men.
+The husband's brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who
+himself could not rise. Barker pulled them apart.
+
+"Lin, boy, you're not hurt?" he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+
+"You're not hurt?" repeated Barker.
+
+"No," answered the cow-puncher, slowly. "I guess not." He looked about
+the room and at the door. "I got interrupted," he said.
+
+"You'll be all right soon," said Barker.
+
+"Nobody cares for me!" cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+weeping.
+
+"Get up," ordered Barker, sternly.
+
+"Don't accuse me, Governor," screamed Lusk. "I'm innocent." And he rose.
+
+Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. "I'll not say there
+was much chance for her," he said. "But any she had is gone through you.
+She'll die."
+
+"Nobody cares for me!" repeated the man. "He has learned my boy to scorn
+me." He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+room.
+
+"Stay sitting," said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+
+But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+sank as he had been. "I guess I don't amount to much," said he. "I feel
+like I was nothing."
+
+"Well, I'm something," said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+breath. "And I know what she weighs." He stared admiringly through his
+spectacles at the seated man.
+
+The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+Barker's face. "Doc," said he, "ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+this way?"
+
+His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+
+"I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?" pursued McLean,
+wistfully.
+
+"You six-foot infant!" said Barker. "Look at your hand."
+
+Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
+raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
+had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
+his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
+bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
+not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
+
+"She is strong," he said. "Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+yet, maybe. Queer world!" he moralized. "People half killing themselves
+to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!"
+
+McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+him. "I would not want," he said, with hesitating utterance--"I'd
+not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do
+to-night."
+
+Barker touched him on the arm. "If there had been another man I could
+trust--"
+
+"Trust!" broke in the cow-puncher. "Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu'
+ever done me. I know I am a man now--if my nerve ain't gone."
+
+"I've known you were a man since I knew you!" said the hearty Governor.
+And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. "As for your
+nerve, I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after"--he glanced at
+the bed--"and tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the
+nerve--"
+
+"Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'--don't let's while
+she's--I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but--"
+
+At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+stammering to say. "What do you want, Judge?" he inquired, coldly.
+
+"I understand," began Slaghammer to Barker--"I am informed--"
+
+"Speak quieter, Judge," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"I understand," repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, "that
+there was a case for the coroner."
+
+"You'll be notified," put in McLean again. "Meanwhile you'll talk quiet
+in this room."
+
+Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+
+"You are a little early, Judge," said Barker, "but--"
+
+"But your ten dollars are safe," said McLean.
+
+The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and
+he was desirous of a second term.
+
+"Under the apprehension that it had already occurred--the
+misapprehension--I took steps to impanel a jury," said he, addressing
+both Barker and McLean. "They are--ah--waiting outside. Responsible men,
+Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few responsible men to-night,
+but I procured these at a little game where they were--ah--losing. You
+may go back, gentlemen," said he, going to the door. "I will summon
+you in proper time." He looked in the room again. "Is the husband not
+intending--"
+
+"That's enough, Judge," said McLean. "There's too many here without
+adding him."
+
+"Judge," spoke a voice at the door, "ain't she ready yet?"
+
+"She is still passing away," observed Slaghammer, piously.
+
+"Because I was thinking," said the man--"I was just--You see, us jury is
+dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and--Judge,
+would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+if it's a sure thing?"
+
+"I see none, my friend," said Slaghammer, benevolently, "since it must
+be." He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+thirst.
+
+In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant
+to watch until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew
+documents from his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over
+them. In all precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late.
+The fiddle, the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls
+travelled clear and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently
+steps unsteadily drew near, and round the corner of the door a voice,
+plaintive and diffident, said, "Judge, ain't she most pretty near
+ready?"
+
+"Wake up, Judge!" said Barker. "Your jury has gone dry again."
+
+The man appeared round the door--a handsome, dishevelled fellow--with
+hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a
+second voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his
+friends. Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once
+to napping. From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each
+arriving more unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his
+fee and no more messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in
+his chair. McLean and Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink
+ribbons, breathed and breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping
+and falling with light sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear
+itself away, and through the stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and
+expand.
+
+Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+also.
+
+"Judge," said Barker, quietly, "you may call them now." And with careful
+steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+
+For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. "Hind
+sight is a turruble clear way o' seein' things," said he. "I think I'll
+take a walk."
+
+"Go," said Barker. "The jury only need me, and I'll join you."
+
+But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay
+had been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had
+shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their
+brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and
+growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant
+beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and
+thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the
+wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received
+Barker's testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even
+while he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars
+came Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in
+their hopes and good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both.
+The night had gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be
+fine. It must be well with everybody.
+
+"You don't say!" they exclaimed, taken aback. "Too bad."
+
+They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+thought paused for a moment. "Her gone!" they murmured. "Hard to get
+used to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?"
+
+"Mr. Lusk," answered Slaghammer, "doubtless--"
+
+"Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the
+grass. She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill,
+Jerky Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse, and
+we'll be back." The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and
+instantly were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+
+The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in
+the cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger
+until breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and
+joking; and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the
+level beyond the hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty,
+wandering shouts broke out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed
+at cans or prairie dogs or anything, cracked as they galloped at large.
+Their speeding, clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs, and,
+descending, merge in the dust their horses had raised. Yet all this was
+nothing in the vastness of the growing day.
+
+Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+strange.
+
+Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was
+a calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead.
+It was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+
+"It's a coffin, boys!" said one, shrewd at guessing.
+
+At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already
+were Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing
+up with their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and
+comment. Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And
+it amazed each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things
+with the others. "Dead!" each one began. "Her, does he say?"
+
+"Why, pshaw!"
+
+"Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!"
+
+Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. "Dead?
+Why, pshaw!"
+
+"Seems Doc couldn't swim her out."
+
+"Couldn't swim her out?"
+
+"That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out."
+
+"Well--there's one less of us."
+
+"Sure! She was one of the boys."
+
+"She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84."
+
+"She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle."
+
+"I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter."
+
+"Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too."
+
+"I knowed her at Laramie."
+
+"Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne."
+
+They laughed loudly at this.
+
+"That's a lonesome coffin," said the Doughie. "That the best you could
+do?"
+
+"You'd say so!" said Toothpick Kid.
+
+"Choices are getting scarce up there," said Chalkeye. "We looked the lot
+over."
+
+They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on
+the hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+rattling between them. "Where's your hearse, Jerky?" asked Chalkeye.
+
+"Have her round in a minute," said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+three or four others.
+
+"Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same," repeated the Doughie. And they
+surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+
+"She did like fixin's," said Limber Jim.
+
+"Fixin's!" said Toothpick Kid. "That's easy."
+
+While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted
+coffin into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's
+store. Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These
+had been able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had
+stretched themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some
+with not even their hats taken off and some with their boots against
+the rough hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few
+waking, and so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs
+were unrolled and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the
+motionless sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards
+of this drab chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped
+upon the counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the
+coffin. While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse
+came tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an
+ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,
+concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they
+revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While
+some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies
+backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered
+by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted
+those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon
+her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and
+nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of
+the hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it
+might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other
+end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in
+some way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however,
+still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had
+done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could
+sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held
+the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They
+had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held
+them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this
+moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled
+around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last,
+with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and
+captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping
+men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone
+outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them,
+and the dray was piled.
+
+Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
+teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
+away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
+past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
+grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
+throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
+teeth.
+
+"Stay with it, Jim!" they shouted. "You're a king!"
+
+A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and
+nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from
+it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,
+he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
+horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
+Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
+skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
+dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
+the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
+coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
+fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
+of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
+drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the
+slow dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
+whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
+riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
+scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker
+and McLean, quietly waiting there, and began choosing among the open,
+weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken. Their
+figures went up and down the uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+
+"Here," said the Doughie, "here's a good hole."
+
+"Here's a deep one," said another.
+
+"We've struck a well here," said some more. "Put her in here."
+
+The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one
+end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they
+pulled the ropes helplessly above.
+
+McLean spoke to Barker. "I'd like to stop this," said he, "but a man
+might as well--"
+
+"Might as well stop a cloud-burst," said Barker.
+
+"Yes, Doc. But it feels--it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+McLeans." And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them
+and lifted the cow-boy out.
+
+"I think," said Slaghammer, stepping forward, "this should proceed no
+further without some--perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay me?"'
+
+"They don't use that on funerals," said the Doughie.
+
+"Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?" inquired the coroner.
+
+Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the
+hill in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so
+returned. But the book was beyond them. "Take it, you; you take it,"
+each one said. False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages
+back and forth, until impatience conquered them. They left the book
+and lowered the coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly,
+decently, steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the
+bottom with was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid
+sand; and a little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the
+same moment. The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single
+jar, quietly smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One
+removed his hat, and then another, and then all. They stood eying each
+his neighbor, and shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley.
+Then they filled in the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near
+by, and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+
+"She was sure one of us," said Chalkeye. "Let's give her the Lament."
+
+And they followed his lead:
+
+
+   "Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   "Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong."
+
+
+When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
+the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
+many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves
+had emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were
+gone--ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or
+heroes, as the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted
+quadrangle the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind
+shook the aces and kings in the grass.
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to
+mend, and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after
+that strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good
+man's heart without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands
+despatched it her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that
+visitor now, she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on
+her table. "Why did he go away so quickly?" she sighed. But when young
+Billy returned to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a
+match for him. He reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin
+McLean did not come back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she
+had threatened. She looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full
+of hope.
+
+"Billy, I'll tell you just why it is," said she. "Lin thinks I'm not a
+real girl."
+
+"A--ah," drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+
+"Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl--"
+
+"A--ah," went the boy, entirely angry. "Anybody can tell you're a girl."
+And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor did his
+dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+
+To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the
+boy, and the man came into town galloping.
+
+No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought
+to do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he
+held her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say "Forgive me! Oh, why
+have you been so long?" She took him back to the room where his picture
+was, and made him sit, and sat herself close. "What is it?" she asked
+him. For through the love she read something else in his serious face.
+So then he told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all
+that he had to tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him.
+"Dear, dear neighbor!" she said.
+
+As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+Billy burst open the door. "There!" he cried. "I knowed Lin knowed you
+were a girl!"
+
+Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin
+on Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the
+only care of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though
+singularly enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of
+Jessamine!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+
+      The black pines stand high up the hills,
+        The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+      While through the canyon's riven cleft
+        From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+      Serene above their paling shapes
+        One star hath wakened in the sky.
+      And here in the gray world below
+        Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+      Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+        And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+      Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+        Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+      Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+        Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+      But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+        And he goes singing might and main.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister***
+#4 in our series by Owen Wister
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+Lin McLean
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN
+
+By
+
+OWEN WISTER
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
+received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
+none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
+disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
+page.
+
+Always yours,
+
+OWEN WISTER
+
+Philadelphia, 1897
+
+
+
+
+HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
+
+In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
+future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
+upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
+one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
+world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
+in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
+dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
+indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
+Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
+some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day.
+The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not
+yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the
+saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the
+ranch books.
+
+"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his blankets.
+
+The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
+from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
+upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
+bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
+south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
+River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
+forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
+mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
+riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the
+mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
+impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it
+wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and
+the yellow, vanishing plains.
+
+"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.
+
+He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made
+his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped
+blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always
+more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from
+Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
+shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
+his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
+shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
+water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
+returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
+breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
+
+"Bugged up to kill!" exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
+
+"He sure has not shaved again?" another inquired, with concern.
+
+"I ain't got my opera-glasses on," answered a third.
+
+"He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache," said a fourth.
+
+"My spring crop," remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, "has
+juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
+which wanders out of your face."
+
+"Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man," said the
+other.
+
+But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
+ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
+
+Him Lin McLean at once addressed. "I was wantin' to speak to you," said
+he.
+
+The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. "I
+understand you're tired of work," he remarked.
+
+"Who told you?" asked the bewildered Lin.
+
+The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. "Well, I have a way of
+taking things in at a glance," said he. "That's why I'm foreman, I
+expect. So you've had enough work?"
+
+"My system's full of it," replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
+thinking, he added, "And I'd like my time."
+
+Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
+
+"It's good we're not busy," said the foreman.
+
+"Meanin' I'd quit all the same?" inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
+
+"No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
+post before it gets hot."
+
+The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and
+the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
+formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
+the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
+cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.
+
+"So-long!" he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be
+going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
+demonstrative by habit.
+
+"Going to stop long at Washakie?" asked one.
+
+"Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now," another mentioned.
+
+"If there's a new girl," said a third, "kiss her one for me, and tell her
+I'm handsomer than you."
+
+"I ain't a deceiver of women," said Lin.
+
+"That's why you'll tell her," replied his friend.
+
+"Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?" asked the cook,
+grieved to lose him.
+
+"I'm after some variety," said the boy.
+
+"If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!"
+shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
+
+This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
+company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
+
+"So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?" said the
+foreman.
+
+"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+"Going to Denver?"
+
+"Why, maybe."
+
+"Take in San Francisco?"
+
+"Sounds slick."
+
+"Made any plans?"
+
+"Gosh, no!"
+
+"Don't want anything on your brain?"
+
+"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:
+
+   "'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
+         And it only died to spite us;
+    'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
+         Spinal meningitis!'"
+
+They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
+bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward
+and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the
+deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like
+bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the
+edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther
+away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed together
+over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple the great
+country which lay sunk beneath.
+
+"A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place," said Lin to the
+foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. "She's sure there,
+though," he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew
+thoughtful. "Shucks!" said he then, abruptly, "where's any joy in money
+that's comin' till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o' spot-cash."
+
+He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
+took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him.
+Thus they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to Fort
+Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
+
+His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
+young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away on
+his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
+entertainment--a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
+waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to attend
+the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending to some
+visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to watch the
+ring of painted naked savages.
+
+The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. "What's he quitting his
+job for?" he asked the foreman.
+
+"Same as most of 'em quit."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Been satisfactory?"
+
+"Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with
+a horse."
+
+"And worthless," suggested the post-trader.
+
+"Well--not yet. He's headed that way."
+
+"Been punching cattle long?"
+
+"Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
+Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
+broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most a
+year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte
+Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the fracture
+was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the hog-ranch
+across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker to tell
+you about that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went up over
+on to Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting outfit on
+Galena Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested in some
+Dutchwoman up there, but she had trouble--died, I think they said--and he
+came down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to Mexico or
+Africa next."
+
+"If you need him," said the post-trader, closing his ledger, "you can
+offer him five more a month."
+
+"That'll not hold him."
+
+"Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
+I've got to see his room is fixed up for him."
+
+"The bishop!" said the foreman. "I've heard him highly spoken of."
+
+"You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man."
+
+"He's better than that; he's a man," stated the foreman--"at least so
+they tell me."
+
+Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
+agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a visit
+from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
+wolf-dance this afternoon--red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
+Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
+was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was not
+only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went to look
+at him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal service this
+Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers and their
+families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the agency doctor,
+the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three gamblers, the
+waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was there because she
+was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in blankets, with two
+royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of squatting Indian
+children, silent and marvelling; and, on the back bench, the commanding
+officer's new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin McLean.
+
+Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
+wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and pageant,
+his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught resting upon
+him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content with the
+other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him and the
+stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel and
+found the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when a
+cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
+three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left
+them late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of
+the Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among
+their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
+keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
+while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
+to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
+first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
+from round his neck.
+
+The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
+breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
+caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
+into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
+silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
+of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it
+prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
+address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain
+suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific
+Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River, had
+despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
+
+Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
+
+"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
+off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
+neck and kissed him."
+
+The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
+to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
+presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
+clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
+and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
+
+Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
+she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
+but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
+brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
+music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
+watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
+hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and
+the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
+listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
+that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
+attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
+with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
+and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
+Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
+hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people
+dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the
+cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
+
+"What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?" inquired the lady, after a
+hundred yards.
+
+"Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?" asked Lin, absently.
+
+"No, indeed. What's them?"
+
+"Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too." Mr. McLean fell silent
+again.
+
+"I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye," said
+Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
+with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
+
+Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
+
+"Only," protested Sabina, "I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out and--
+well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness."
+
+But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.
+Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
+sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed
+across the many little running channels which lead water through that
+thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind
+them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled
+to a toy village.
+
+"My! but it's far to everywheres here," exclaimed Sabina, "and it's
+little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the
+talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?"
+
+"That's Little Wind River Canyon," said the young man. "Feel like goin'
+there, Miss Stone?"
+
+"Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's."
+
+So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
+
+"When do your folks eat supper?" inquired Lin.
+
+"Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on."
+
+"How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?"
+Lin asked.
+
+"What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day," said
+the lady.
+
+"Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
+colonel's table," Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. "That
+is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
+know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'."
+
+"You're the teasingest man--" said Miss Stone, pouting. "I might have
+knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked."
+
+"Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
+out to-night."
+
+"Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!" and Sabina giggled.
+
+A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
+the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
+
+"Something like them partridges used to," said Lin, musingly.
+
+"Partridges?" inquired Sabina.
+
+"Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
+by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess."
+
+Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
+
+"We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times," said Lin, his
+wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
+looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
+and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
+advantage.
+
+"I expect you used to dance a lot," remarked Sabina, for a subject.
+
+"Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?"
+
+Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
+
+"Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?" she inquired next.
+
+"Why, sure," said Lin, waking for a moment; "but I like your color best.
+A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's."
+
+"Indeed, I don't think so!" exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant to
+perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
+pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
+and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
+
+"Never?" said he. "It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
+different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in July--
+around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've
+swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston."
+He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
+left him.
+
+"I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?" he
+said.
+
+Miss Stone was at a loss.
+
+"I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston."
+
+Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
+journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the
+post and her.
+
+"I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?" said she.
+
+"I ain't got no folks," replied Lin, "barring a brother. I expect he is
+taking good care of himself."
+
+"Don't you correspond?"
+
+"Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
+nothin'."
+
+Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
+It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
+rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she
+noticed him step to his own.
+
+"Why, I didn't know you were lame!" cried she.
+
+"Shucks!" said Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on his
+horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
+measure of his activity.
+
+"That's how," said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. "No,"
+Lin continued, "Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
+look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough
+for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
+now. Whoop ye!" he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a
+jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
+
+Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
+she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
+took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found
+the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of
+fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that
+inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury
+clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found
+others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles
+from the railway, and men there were many and girls were few.
+
+The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
+knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up
+beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
+
+"Don't get full, Lin," said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
+store.
+
+"My plans ain't settled that far yet," replied Mr. McLean.
+
+"Leave it out of them," said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
+the stage.
+
+It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
+Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
+ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
+flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
+springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
+the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
+Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
+pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
+over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
+clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
+
+"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.
+
+"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a
+month, I guess."
+
+He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
+during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
+sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were?
+But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom
+of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided it was a
+suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them to change
+their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and unharness. Then
+they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
+rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the bishop
+proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed
+through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching
+Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That afternoon the
+stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform at Green River;
+this was the route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of
+frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was going west. His
+robes had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
+gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then
+laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
+
+"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but I
+can't, you see. Not even at this."
+
+The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
+
+"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the bishop, giving his hand to
+Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting full'
+out of your plans?"
+
+Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he said.
+"I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added.
+
+"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
+enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
+in the same place."
+
+He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
+up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of
+the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music
+sounded through one of the many open doors.
+
+"Wonder if the professor's there yet?" said Lin, and he went across the
+railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into
+the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
+rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin did
+not join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a dealer
+and a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were painted
+sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares. The
+legend "Jacks pay" was also clearly painted. The player placed chips on
+whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards (quite
+fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton case made
+with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of chips rose
+high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was lessened by
+one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had much better have
+joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of the dealer met the
+eye of the player. After that slight incident the player's chip pile
+began to rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer made admiring comments
+on such a run of luck. Then the player stopped, cashed in, and said
+good-night, having nearly doubled the number of his gold pieces.
+
+"Five dollars' worth," said Lin, sitting down in the vacant seat. The
+chips were counted out to him. He played with unimportant shiftings of
+fortune until a short while before his train was due, and then,
+singularly enough, he discovered he was one hundred and fifty dollars
+behind the game.
+
+"I guess I'll leave the train go without me," said Lin, buying five
+dollars' worth more of ivory counters. So that train came and went,
+removing eastward Mr. McLean's trunk.
+
+During the hour that followed his voice grew dogged and his remarks
+briefer, as he continually purchased more chips from the now surprised
+and sympathetic dealer. It was really wonderful how steadily Lin lost--
+just as steadily as his predecessor had won after that meeting of eyes
+early in the evening.
+
+When Lin was three hundred dollars out, his voice began to clear of its
+huskiness and a slight humor revolved and sparkled in his eye. When his
+seven hundred dollars had gone to safer hands and he had nothing left at
+all but some silver fractions of a dollar, his robust cheerfulness was
+all back again. He walked out and stood among the railroad tracks with
+his hands in his pockets, and laughed at himself in the dark. Then his
+fingers came on the check for Omaha, and he laughed loudly. The trunk by
+this hour must be nearing Rawlins; it was going east anyhow.
+
+"I'm following it, you bet," he declared, kicking the rail. "Not yet
+though. Nor I'll not go to Washakie to have 'em josh me. And yonder lays
+Boston." He stretched his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another
+man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked
+freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. "And I guess Boston'll
+have to get along without me for a spell, too," continued Lin. "A man
+don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin'
+with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that hog
+chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank, he'd
+say to me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit o'
+clothes and--no, sir, you bet!"
+
+Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly
+down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
+division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals, the
+great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its
+locomotive moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed steaming
+to its place to tackle a night's work. Cars were shifted, heavily bumping
+and parting.
+
+"Hello, Lin!" A face was looking from the window of the caboose.
+
+"Hello!" responded Mr. McLean, perceiving above his head Honey Wiggin, a
+good friend of his. They had not met for three years.
+
+"They claimed you got killed somewheres. I was sorry to hear it." Honey
+offered his condolence quite sincerely.
+
+"Bruck my leg," corrected Lin, "if that's what they meant."
+
+"I expect that's it," said Honey. "You've had no other trouble?"
+
+"Been boomin'," said Lin.
+
+From the mere undertone in their voices it was plain they were good
+friends, carefully hiding their pleasure at meeting.
+
+"Wher're yu' bound?" inquired Honey.
+
+"East," said Lin.
+
+"Better jump in here, then. We're goin' west."
+
+"That just suits me," said Lin.
+
+The busy lanterns wagged among the switches, the steady lights of the
+saloons shone along the town's wooden facade. From the bluffs that wall
+Green River the sweet, clean sage-brush wind blew down in currents
+freshly through the coal-smoke. A wrench passed through the train from
+locomotive to caboose, each fettered car in turn strained into motion and
+slowly rolled over the bridge and into silence from the steam and the
+bells of the railroad yard. Through the open windows of the caboose great
+dull-red cinders rattled in, and the whistles of distant Union Pacific
+locomotives sounded over the open plains ominous and long, like ships at
+sea.
+
+Honey and Lin sat for a while, making few observations and far between,
+as their way is between whom flows a stream of old-time understanding.
+Mutual whiskey and silence can express much friendship, and eloquently.
+
+"What are yu' doing at present?" Lin inquired.
+
+"Prospectin'."
+
+Now prospecting means hunting gold, except to such spirits as the boy
+Lin. To these it means finding gold. So Lin McLean listened to the talk
+of his friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night. He
+saw himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down a
+bag of gold-dust. Then he saw the new, clean money the man would hand him
+in exchange, bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded over,
+and heavy, satisfactory gold pieces. And then he saw the blue water that
+twinkles beneath Boston. His fingers came again on his trunk check. He
+had his ticket, too. And as dawn now revealed the gray country to him,
+his eye fell casually upon a mile-post: "Omaha, 876." He began to watch
+for them:--877, 878. But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
+
+"What are yu' laughin' about?" asked Honey.
+
+"Oh, the wheels."
+
+"Wheels?"
+
+"Don't yu' hear 'em?" said Lin. "'Variety,' they keep a-sayin'. 'Variety,
+variety.'"
+
+"Huh!" said Honey, with scorn. "'Ker-chunka-chunk' 's all I make it."
+
+"You're no poet," observed Mr. McLean.
+
+As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight, a gleam of dismay shot
+over Lin's face, and he ducked his head out of sight of the window, but
+immediately raised it again. Then he leaned out, waving his arm with a
+certain defiant vigor. But the bishop on the platform failed to notice
+this performance, though it was done for his sole benefit, nor would Lin
+explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was. Therefore, very
+naturally, Honey drew a conclusion for himself, looked quickly out of the
+window, and, being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,
+sulkily, "Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
+yu' in Evanston?" And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
+friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
+
+By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends, forgot
+prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In
+Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose, and came to
+Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek. Here the
+berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and the bears
+in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually with the season,
+making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors. It was now
+August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making mud-pies for sixty days. But the
+philosopher's stone was not in the wash at that placer, nor did Lin
+gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the nail of his thumb. Then they
+heard of an excitement at Obo, Nevada, and, hurrying to Obo, they made
+some more mud-pies.
+
+Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, "Lin,
+wher're yu' goin'?"
+
+And Lin always replied, "East." This became a signal for drinks.
+
+For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
+the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights of
+untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with
+falling waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation
+presides over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof
+of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The mean
+ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot of mange.
+No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry, unimportant
+ugliness.
+
+There is gold in Nevada, but Lin and Honey did not find it. Prospecting
+of the sort they did, besides proving unfruitful, is not comfortable. Now
+and again, losing patience, Lin would leave his work and stalk about and
+gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water. Passing
+each busy prospector, Lin would read on every broad, upturned pair of
+overalls the same label, "Levi Strauss, No. 2," with a picture of two
+lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to
+split them asunder. Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that
+too, and when he considered all things he laughed to himself. Then,
+having stretched the ache out of his long legs, he would return to his
+ditch. As autumn wore on, his feet grew cold in the mushy gravel they
+were sunk in. He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his boots, and
+hated Obo, Nevada. But he held himself ready to say "East" whenever he
+saw Honey coming along with the bottle. The cold weather put an end to
+this adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow, through which the
+sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the two friends
+drifted southward.
+
+Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the
+dirt. It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze. But
+this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than Nevada.
+Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them found a
+little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite froze one
+day.
+
+"We're seein' the country, anyway," said Honey.
+
+"Seein' hell," said Lin, "and there's more of it above ground than I
+thought."
+
+"What'll we do?" Honey inquired.
+
+"Have to walk for a job--a good-payin' job," responded the hopeful
+cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.
+
+Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
+apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the simpler
+prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in Boston between the
+ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this qualification, the
+apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa, and liked him. Lin
+made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of; and, as the mild
+weather began, he materially increased the apothecary's business by
+persuading him to send East for a soda-water fountain. The ladies of the
+town clustered around this entertaining novelty, and while sipping
+vanilla and lemon bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of the town
+discovered that whiskey with soda and strawberry syrup was delicious, and
+produced just as competent effects. A group of them were generally
+standing in the shop and shaking dice to decide who should pay for the
+next, while Lin administered to each glass the necessary ingredients.
+Thus money began to come to him a little more steadily than had been its
+wont, and he divided with the penniless Honey.
+
+But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
+won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
+South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the
+new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his feet,
+was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the dance-hall at
+the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next day but one.
+
+The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had white
+eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you spoke
+pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried to beat
+your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what made him
+so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and every
+gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get up a
+race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon opened a
+bank account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a
+silver-inlaid one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle
+richly stamped. Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the
+drug-store and inquire, "Lin, wher're yu' goin'?"
+
+But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water
+fountain with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season of
+fine sand and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung
+heavily over man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling with
+joy; the little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and shrank
+to a succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus bloomed
+everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the sand. There
+were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste very good; but
+if you drank from the standing pools where the river had been, you
+repaired to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of wandering
+players came dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa, played a
+brass-band up and down the street, and announced the powerful drama of
+"East Lynne." Then Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that lie
+between there and Chelsea, and of the sea that must look so cool. He
+forgot them while following the painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel; but,
+going to bed in the back part of the drug-store, he remembered how he
+used to beat everybody swimming in the salt water.
+
+"I'm goin'," he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
+inspected his bank account. "I'm sure goin'," he repeated, blowing the
+light out, "and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!" for he had
+often thought of the bishop's story. "You bet!" he remarked once more in
+a muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
+have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.
+
+"I'd pull out with yer," he said, "only I can do business round Yuma and
+westward with the pinto."
+
+For three farewell days Lin and Honey roved together in all sorts of
+places, where they were welcome, and once more Lin rode a horse and was
+in his native element. Then he travelled to Deming, and so through Denver
+to Omaha, where he was told that his trunk had been sold for some months.
+Besides a suit of clothes for town wear, it had contained a buffalo coat
+for his brother--something scarce to see in these days.
+
+"Frank'll have to get along without it," he observed, philosophically,
+and took the next eastbound train.
+
+If you journey in a Pullman from Mesa to Omaha without a waistcoat, and
+with a silk handkerchief knotted over the collar of your flannel shirt
+instead of a tie, wearing, besides, tall, high-heeled boots, a soft, gray
+hat with a splendid brim, a few people will notice you, but not the
+majority. New Mexico and Colorado are used to these things. As Iowa, with
+its immense rolling grain, encompasses you, people will stare a little
+more, for you're getting near the East, where cow-punchers are not
+understood. But in those days the line of cleavage came sharp-drawn at
+Chicago. West of there was still tolerably west, but east of there was
+east indeed, and the Atlantic Ocean was the next important
+stopping-place. In Lin's new train, good gloves, patent-leathers, and
+silence prevailed throughout the sleeping-car, which was for Boston
+without change. Had not home memories begun impetuously to flood his
+mind, he would have felt himself conspicuous. Town clothes and
+conventions had their due value with him. But just now the boy's single-
+hearted thoughts were far from any surroundings, and he was murmuring to
+himself, "To-morrow! tomorrow night!"
+
+There were ladies in that blue plush car for Boston who looked at Lin for
+thirty miles at a stretch; and by the time Albany was reached the next
+day one or two of them commented that he was the most attractive-looking
+man they had ever seen! Whereas, beyond his tallness, and wide-open,
+jocular eyes, eyes that seemed those of a not highly conscientious wild
+animal, there was nothing remarkable about young Lin except stage effect.
+The conductor had been annoyed to have such a passenger; but the
+cow-puncher troubled no one, and was extremely silent. So evidently was
+he a piece of the true frontier that curious and hopeful
+fellow-passengers, after watching him with diversion, more than once took
+a seat next to him. He met their chatty inquiries with monosyllables so
+few and so unprofitable in their quiet politeness that the passengers
+soon gave him up. At Springfield he sent a telegram to his brother at the
+great dry-goods establishment that employed him.
+
+The train began its homestretch after Worcester, and whirled and swung by
+hills and ponds he began to watch for, and through stations with old
+wayside names. These flashed on Lin's eye as he sat with his hat off and
+his forehead against the window, looking: Wellesley. Then, not long
+after, Riverside. That was the Charles River, and did the picnic woods
+used to be above the bridge or below? West Newton; Newtonville; Newton.
+"Faneuil's next," he said aloud in the car, as the long-forgotten
+home-knowledge shone forth in his recollection. The traveller seated near
+said, "Beg pardon?" but, turning, wondered at the all-unconscious Lin,
+with his forehead pressed against the glass. The blue water flashed into
+sight, and soon after they were running in the darkness between high
+walls; but the cow-puncher never moved, though nothing could be seen.
+When the porter announced "Boston," he started up and followed like a
+sheep in the general exodus. Down on the platform he moved along with the
+slow crowd till some one touched him, and, wheeling round, he seized both
+his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.
+
+There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
+knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce
+civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted
+resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by;
+and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and
+smiled gently to herself.
+
+But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
+afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
+and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
+Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
+air of Boston, looking at all things, and making it a stretch for his
+sleek companion to keep step with him. Frank thought of the refined
+friends he should have to introduce his brother to; for he had risen with
+his salary, and now belonged to a small club where the paying-tellers of
+banks played cards every night, and the head clerk at the Parker House
+was president. Perhaps he should not have to reveal the cow-puncher to
+these shining ones. Perhaps the cow-puncher would not stay very long. Of
+course he was glad to see him again, and he would take him to dine at
+some obscure place this first evening. But this was not Lin's plan. Frank
+must dine with him, at the Parker House. Frank demurred, saying it was he
+that should be host.
+
+"And," he added, "they charge up high for wines at Parker's." Then for
+the twentieth time he shifted a sidelong eye over his brother's clothes.
+
+"You're goin' to take your grub with me," said Lin. "That's all right,
+I guess. And there ain't any 'no' about it. Things is not the same like
+as if father was livin'--(his voice softened)--and here to see me come
+home. Now I'm good for several dinners with wines charged up high, I
+expect, nor it ain't nobody in this world, barrin' just Lin McLean, that
+I've any need to ask for anything. 'Mr. McLean,' says I to Lin, 'can yu'
+spare me some cash?' 'Why, to be sure, you bet!' And we'll start off with
+steamed Duxbury clams." The cow-puncher slapped his pocket, where the
+coin made a muffled chinking. Then he said, gruffly, "I suppose
+Swampscott's there yet?"
+
+"Yes," said Frank. "It's a dead little town, is Swampscott."
+
+"I guess I'll take a look at the old house tomorrow," Lin pursued.
+
+"Oh, that's been pulled down since-- I forget the year they improved that
+block."
+
+Lin regarded in silence his brother, who was speaking so jauntily of the
+first and last home they had ever had.
+
+"Seventy-nine is when it was," continued Frank. "So you can save the
+trouble of travelling away down to Swampscott."
+
+"I guess I'll go to the graveyard, anyway," said the cow-puncher in his
+offish voice, and looking fixedly in front of him.
+
+They came into Washington Street, and again the elder McLean uneasily
+surveyed the younger's appearance.
+
+But the momentary chill had melted from the heart of the genial Lin.
+"After to-morrow," said he, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, "yu'
+can start any lead yu' please, and I guess I can stay with yu' pretty
+close, Frank."
+
+Frank said nothing. He saw one of the members of his club on the other
+side of the way, and the member saw him, and Frank caught diverted
+amazement on the member's face. Lin's hand weighed on his shoulder, and
+the stress became too great. "Lin," said he, "while you're running with
+our crowd, you don't want to wear that style of hat, you know."
+
+It may be that such words can in some way be spoken at such a time, but
+not in the way that these were said. The frozen fact was irrevocably
+revealed in the tone of Frank's voice.
+
+The cow-puncher stopped dead short, and his hand slid off his brother's
+shoulder. "You've made it plain," he said, evenly, slanting his steady
+eyes down into Frank's. "You've explained yourself fairly well. Run along
+with your crowd, and I'll not bother yu' more with comin' round and
+causin' yu' to feel ashamed. It's a heap better to understand these
+things at once, and save making a fool of yourself any longer 'n yu' need
+to. I guess there ain't no more to be said, only one thing. If yu' see me
+around on the street, don't yu' try any talk, for I'd be liable to close
+your jaw up, and maybe yu'd have more of a job explainin' that to your
+crowd than you've had makin' me see what kind of a man I've got for a
+brother."
+
+Frank found himself standing alone before any reply to these sentences
+had occurred to him. He walked slowly to his club, where a friend joked
+him on his glumness.
+
+Lin made a sore failure of amusing himself that night; and in the bright,
+hot morning he got into the train for Swampscott. At the graveyard he saw
+a woman lay a bunch of flowers on a mound and kneel, weeping.
+
+"There ain't nobody to do that for this one," thought the cow-puncher,
+and looked down at the grave he had come to see, then absently gazed at
+the woman.
+
+She had stolen away from her daily life to come here where her grief was
+shrined, and now her heart found it hard to bid the lonely place goodbye.
+So she lingered long, her thoughts sunk deep in the motionless past. When
+she at last looked up, she saw the tall, strange man re-enter from the
+street among the tombs, and deposit on one of them an ungainly lump of
+flowers. They were what Lin had been able hastily to buy in Swampscott.
+He spread them gently as he had noticed the woman do, but her act of
+kneeling he did not imitate. He went away quickly. For some hours he hung
+about the little town, aimlessly loitering, watching the salt water where
+he used to swim.
+
+"Yu' don't belong any more, Lin," he miserably said at length, and took
+his way to Boston.
+
+The next morning, determined to see the sights, he was in New York, and
+drifted about to all places night and day, till his money was mostly
+gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and
+a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a
+ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to
+numb his good humor.
+
+When, after three days, the Missouri lay behind him and his holiday, he
+stretched his legs and took heart to see out of the window the signs of
+approaching desolation. And when on the fourth day civilization was
+utterly emptied out of the world, he saw a bunch of cattle, and,
+galloping among them, his spurred and booted kindred. And his manner took
+on that alertness a horse shows on turning into the home road. As the
+stage took him toward Washakie, old friends turned up every fifty miles
+or so, shambling out of a cabin or a stable, and saying, in casual tones,
+"Hello, Lin, where've you been at?"
+
+At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop
+of Wyoming. He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting
+was hearty.
+
+"It took a week for my robes to catch up with me," he said, laughing.
+Then, in a little while, "How was the East?"
+
+"First-rate," said Lin, not looking at him. He was shy of the
+conversation's taking a moral turn. But the bishop had no intention of
+reverting--at any rate, just now--to their last talk at Green River, and
+the advice he had then given.
+
+"I trust your friends were all well?" he said.
+
+"I guess they was healthy enough," said Lin.
+
+"I suppose you found Boston much changed? It's a beautiful city."
+
+"Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect," Lin replied.
+
+The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no
+notion whatever of what now revealed itself.
+
+"Mr. Bishop," the cow-puncher said, "how was that about that fellow you
+told about that's in the Bible somewheres?--he come home to his folks,
+and they--well there was his father saw him comin'"--He stopped,
+embarrassed.
+
+Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed
+them in the church at the agency intently watching him. And, just now,
+what were best to say he did not know. He looked at the young man
+gravely.
+
+"Have yu' got a Bible?" pursued Lin. "For, excuse me, but I'd like yu' to
+read that onced."
+
+So the bishop read, and Lin listened. And all the while this good
+clergyman was perplexed how to speak--or if indeed to speak at this time
+at all--to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone
+so sorely wrong. When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes
+from the bishop's face.
+
+"How long has that there been wrote?" he asked.
+
+He was told about how long.
+
+"Mr. Bishop," said Lin, "I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
+never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
+plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry,
+down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen a
+man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the
+elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
+put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!"
+
+"Well," said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, "I
+am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been
+finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived."
+
+Lin meditated. "I guess that could be," he said. "Yes; after that yu've
+been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till
+lately, I guess that could be."
+
+Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
+things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
+Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was
+delivering the fulness of his heart to. "And come to think," he
+concluded, "it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
+big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
+sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll
+not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a
+stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
+here" (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), "seein' it
+onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.
+Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River."
+
+The cow-puncher stated this merely as a fact, and without any note of
+self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away from
+Lin. Knowing his man--for had he not seen many of this kind in his desert
+diocese?--he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the
+cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should now
+do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would join it
+this season, but next he should work over to the Powder River country.
+More business was over there, and better chances for a man to take up
+some land and have a ranch of his own. As they got out at Fort Washakie,
+the bishop handed him a small book, in which he had turned several leaves
+down, carefully avoiding any page that related of miracles.
+
+"You need not read it through, you know," he said, smiling; "just read
+where I have marked, and see if you don't find some more facts. Goodbye--
+and always come and see me."
+
+The next morning he watched Lin riding slowly out of the post towards
+Wind River, leading a single pack-horse. By-and-by the little moving dot
+went over the ridge. And as the bishop walked back into the
+parade-ground, thinking over the possibilities in that untrained manly
+soul, he shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WINNING OF THE BISCUIT-SHOOTER
+
+It was quite clear to me that Mr. McLean could not know the news. Meeting
+him to-day had been unforeseen--unforeseen and so pleasant that the thing
+had never come into my head until just now, after both of us had talked
+and dined our fill, and were torpid with satisfaction.
+
+I had found Lin here at Riverside in the morning. At my horse's approach
+to the cabin, it was he and not the postmaster who had come precipitately
+out of the door.
+
+"I'm turruble pleased to see yu'," he had said, immediately.
+
+"What's happened?" said I, in some concern at his appearance.
+
+And he piteously explained: "Why, I've been here all alone since
+yesterday!"
+
+This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
+gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
+blurted out before I could get off my horse.
+
+Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock to
+him?
+
+"As to that," replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, "when a man expects
+lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course. But
+when he has figured on finding company--say--" he broke off (and
+vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)--"when you're lucky enough to catch
+yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to yourself
+for hours.--You've not seen anything of Tommy?" he pursued with interest.
+
+I had not; and forthwith Lin poured out to me the pent-up complaints and
+sociability with which he was bursting. The foreman had sent him over
+here with a sackful of letters for the post, and to bring back the week's
+mail for the ranch. A day was gone now, and nothing for a man to do but
+sit and sit. Tommy was overdue fifteen hours. Well, you could have
+endured that, but the neighbors had all locked their cabins and gone to
+Buffalo. It was circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered the money
+there must be in the circus business? Tommy had taken the outgoing
+letters early yesterday. Nobody had kept him waiting. By all rules he
+should have been back again last night. Maybe the stage was late reaching
+Powder River, and Tommy had had to lay over for it. Well, that would
+justify him. Far more likely he had gone to the circus himself and taken
+the mail with him. Tommy was no type of man for postmaster. Except
+drawing the allowance his mother in the East gave him first of every
+month, he had never shown punctuality that Lin could remember. Never had
+any second thoughts, and awful few first ones. Told bigger lies than a
+small man ought, also.
+
+"Has successes, though," said I, wickedly.
+
+"Huh!" went on Mr. McLean. "Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And
+she"--Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive--"why, even that
+girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant he
+was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of 'em
+retains interest in Tommy."
+
+Lin was unsaddling and looking after my horse, just because he was glad
+to see me. Since our first acquaintance, that memorable summer of
+Pitchstone Canyon when he had taken such good care of me and such bad care
+of himself, I had learned pretty well about horses and camp craft in
+general. He was an entire boy then. But he had been East since, East by a
+route of his own discovering--and from his account of that journey it had
+proved, I think, a sort of spiritual experience. And then the years of
+our friendship were beginning to roll up. Manhood of the body he had
+always richly possessed; and now, whenever we met after a season's
+absence and spoke those invariable words which all old friends upon this
+earth use to each other at meeting--"You haven't changed, you haven't
+changed at all!"--I would wonder if manhood had arrived in Lin's boy
+soul. And so to-day, while he attended to my horse and explained the
+nature of Tommy (a subject he dearly loved just now), I looked at him and
+took an intimate, superior pride in feeling how much more mature I was
+than he, after all.
+
+There's nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved, and
+on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some
+firewood.
+
+"Look at those sorrowful toothpicks," said he: "Tommy's work."
+
+So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a
+pile of real logs that would last a week. He had also cleaned the stove,
+and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor. It
+appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse way
+on account of the slant. Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped
+alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his
+sense of virtue. And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy
+yet.
+
+"It's good yu' come this forenoon," Lin said to me. "I'd not have had the
+heart to get up another dinner just for myself. Let's eat rich!"
+
+Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the
+sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened a
+number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated
+apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout
+the stew.
+
+"Tommy'll be hot about these," said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs.
+"He don't mind what yu' use of his canned goods--pickled salmon and
+truck. He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg. Then
+he'll tell any lie. But shucks! Yu' can read Tommy right through his
+clothing. 'Make yourself at home, Lin,' says he, yesterday. And he showed
+me his fresh milk and his stuff. 'Here's a new ham,' says he; 'too bad my
+damned hens ain't been layin'. The sons-o'guns have quit on me ever since
+Christmas.' And away he goes to Powder River for the mail. 'You swore too
+heavy about them hens,' thinks I. Well, I expect he may have travelled
+half a mile by the time I'd found four nests."
+
+I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly--and in Wyoming they were
+always a luxury. But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and I
+enjoyed them thinking of Tommy. Perhaps manhood was not quite established
+in my own soul at that time--and perhaps that is the reason why it is the
+only time I have ever known which I would live over again, those years
+when people said, "You are old enough to know better"--and one didn't
+care!
+
+Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some
+cigars. It was now that the news came back into my head.
+
+"What do you think of--" I began, and stopped.
+
+I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of digestion.
+I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it occurred to
+me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before this, had he
+known. So, observing how comfortable he was, I began differently.
+
+"What is the most important event that can happen in this country?" said
+I.
+
+Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his
+back, dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed. He waggled one
+limp, open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over him.
+
+"I want to know what you consider the most important event that can
+happen in this country," said I, again, enunciating each word with slow
+clearness.
+
+The throat and lips of Mr. McLean moved, and a sulky sound came forth
+that I recognized to be meant for the word "War." Then he rolled over so
+that his face was away from me, and put an arm over his eyes.
+
+"I don't mean country in the sense of United States," said I. "I mean
+this country here, and Bear Creek, and--well, the ranches southward for
+fifty miles, say. Important to this section."
+
+"Mosquitoes'll be due in about three weeks," said Lin. "Yu' might leave a
+man rest till then."
+
+"I want your opinion," said I.
+
+"Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers."
+
+"No."
+
+"Yu' said yu' wanted my opinion," said Lin. "Seems like yu' merely figure
+on givin' me yours."
+
+"Very well," said I. "Very well, then."
+
+I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon
+perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for
+some minutes now.
+
+"I expect a railroad would be more important," said Mr. McLean,
+persuasively, from the floor.
+
+"Than a rise in steers?" said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. "Oh yes.
+Yes, a railroad certainly would."
+
+"It's got to be money, anyhow," stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. "Money in
+some shape."
+
+"How little you understand the real wants of the country!" said I, coming
+to the point. "It's a girl."
+
+Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.
+
+"A girl," I repeated. "A new girl coming to this starved country."
+
+The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. "Well,"
+said he, "yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
+with dinner and sleep." He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
+expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
+entertainment, and palls. "Starved," he presently muttered. "We are kind
+o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
+mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
+she is!" he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at me
+with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. "Sidney, Nebraska."
+
+I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her name--but
+his geography of her was accurate.
+
+One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
+received a letter--no common event for her. Therefore, during several
+days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all
+see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me.
+The letter was signed,
+
+                      "Ever your afectionite frend.
+                           "Katie Peck,
+
+and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the
+drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you
+when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney,
+Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should
+like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. "Like to come and be
+like old times" filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers
+with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on
+Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she
+does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned, and
+old girls had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss
+Molly Wood (the Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in order
+the cabin and the children of the Taylors, while they were gone
+forty-five miles to the stage station to meet their guest.
+
+"Well," said Lin, judicially, "Miss Wood is a lady."
+
+"Yes," said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when
+Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.
+
+Lin thoughtfully continued. "She is--she's--she's--what are you laughin'
+at?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. You don't see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to, do
+you?"
+
+"Huh! So that's got around. Well, o' course I'd ought t've knowed better,
+I suppose. All the same, there's lots and lots of girls do like gettin'
+kissed against their wishes--and you know it."
+
+"But the point would rather seem to be that she--"
+
+"Would rather seem! Don't yu' start that professor style o' yours, or
+I'll--I'll talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu've heard
+me do yet."
+
+"Impossible!" I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.
+
+"As to point--that don't need to be explained to me. She's a lady all
+right." He ruminated for a moment. "She has about scared all the boys
+off, though," he continued. "And that's what you get by being refined,"
+he concluded, as if Providence had at length spoken in this matter.
+
+"She has not scared off a boy from Virginia, I notice," said I. "He was
+there yesterday afternoon again. Ridden all the way over from Sunk Creek.
+Didn't seem particularly frightened."
+
+"Oh, well, nothin' alarms him--not even refinement," said Mr. McLean,
+with his grin. "And she'll fool your Virginian like she done the balance
+of us. You wait. Shucks! If all the girls were that chilly, why, what
+would us poor punchers do?"
+
+"You have me cornered," said I, and we sat in a philosophical silence,
+Lin on the floor still, and I at the window. There I looked out upon a
+scene my eyes never tired of then, nor can my memory now. Spring had
+passed over it with its first, lightest steps. The pastured levels
+undulated in emerald. Through the many-changing sage, that just this
+moment of to-day was lilac, shone greens scarce a week old in the dimples
+of the foot-hills; and greens new-born beneath today's sun melted among
+them. Around the doubling of the creek in the willow thickets glimmered
+skeined veils of yellow and delicate crimson. The stream poured
+turbulently away from the snows of the mountains behind us. It went
+winding in many folds across the meadows into distance and smallness, and
+so vanished round the great red battlement of wall beyond. Upon this were
+falling the deep hues of afternoon--violet, rose, and saffron, swimming
+and meeting as if some prism had dissolved and flowed over the turrets
+and crevices of the sandstone. Far over there I saw a dot move.
+
+"At last!" said I.
+
+Lin looked out of the window. "It's more than Tommy," said he, at once;
+and his eyes made it out before mine could. "It's a wagon. That's Tommy's
+bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish," Lin severely
+commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least be a
+homestretch.
+
+Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
+horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
+faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
+remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
+best understood by cows--"Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
+oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!" But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets are
+worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can produce
+these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such sounds
+ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when the last
+cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already befallen)
+the yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle appeared to
+appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that was plain
+even at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch, after all. The
+bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned beside the
+wagon.
+
+"Showin' off," remarked Lin. "Tommy's showin' off." Suspicion crossed his
+face, and then certainty. "Why, we might have knowed that!" he exclaimed,
+in dudgeon. "It's her." He hastened outside for a better look, and I came
+to the door myself. "That's what it is," said he. "It's the girl. Oh yes.
+That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for. She come by the stage
+all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been too tired to travel, yu'
+see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his buckskins--they're
+four-year-olds. Or else--anyway, they laid over last night at Powder
+River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu' see, holdin' the mail
+back on us twenty-four hours--and that's your postmaster!"
+
+It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
+indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new girl,
+I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.
+
+Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade
+drew near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention
+focused upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear made
+a cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly chirruped
+to his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For Tommy wore
+upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in the Wild West.
+Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might have conducted a
+show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person before the eyes of
+princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake skin for a
+hat-band, he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of buckskin, and
+concluded with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there were things
+between his shirt and his heels, but all leather and deadly weapons. He
+had also a riata, a cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently employed these
+Spanish names for the objects. I wish that I had not lost Tommy's
+photograph in Rocky Mountain costume. You must understand that he was
+really pretty, with blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a graceful figure; and,
+besides, he had twenty-four hours' start of poor dusty Lin, whose best
+clothes were elsewhere.
+
+You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present
+us to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook
+the office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. "Good friends
+of mine, and gentlemen, both," said he to Miss Peck; and to us, "A lady
+whose acquaintance will prove a treat to our section."
+
+We all bowed at each other beneath the florid expanse of these
+recommendations, and I was proceeding to murmur something about its being
+a long journey and a fine day when Miss Peck cut me short, gaily:
+
+"Well," she exclaimed to Tommy, "I guess I'm pretty near ready for them
+eggs you've spoke so much about."
+
+I have not often seen Mr. McLean lose his presence of mind. He needed
+merely to exclaim, "Why, Tommy, you told me your hens had not been laying
+since Christmas!" and we could have sat quiet and let Tommy try to find
+all the eggs that he could. But the new girl was a sore embarrassment to
+the cow-puncher's wits. Poor Lin stood by the wheels of the wagon. He
+looked up at Miss Peck, he looked over at Tommy, his features assumed a
+rueful expression, and he wretchedly blurted,
+
+"Why, Tommy, I've been and eat 'em."
+
+"Well, if that ain't!" cried Miss Peck. She stared with interest at Lin
+as he now assisted her to descend.
+
+"All?" faltered Tommy. "Not the four nests?"
+
+"I've had three meals, yu' know," Lin reminded him, deprecatingly.
+
+"I helped him," said I. "Ten innocent, fresh eggs. But we have left some
+ham. Forgive us, please."
+
+"I declare!" said Miss Peck, abruptly, and rolled her sluggish, inviting
+eyes upon me. "You're a case, too, I expect."
+
+But she took only brief note of me, although it was from head to foot. In
+her stare the dull shine of familiarity grew vacant, and she turned back
+to Lin McLean. "You carry that," said she, and gave the pleased
+cow-puncher a hand valise.
+
+"I'll look after your things, Miss Peck," called Tommy, now springing
+down from his horse. The egg tragedy had momentarily stunned him.
+
+"You'll attend to the mail first, Mr. Postmaster!" said the lady, but
+favoring him with a look from her large eyes. "There's plenty of
+gentlemen here." With that her glance favored Lin. She went into the
+cabin, he following her close, with the Taylors and myself in the rear.
+"Well, I guess I'm about collapsed!" said she, vigorously, and sank upon
+one of Tommy's chairs.
+
+The fragile article fell into sticks beneath her, and Lin leaped to her
+assistance. He placed her upon a firmer foundation. Mrs. Taylor brought a
+basin and towel to bathe the dust from her face, Mr. Taylor produced
+whiskey, and I found sugar and hot water. Tommy would doubtless have done
+something in the way of assistance or restoratives, but he was gone to
+the stable with the horses.
+
+"Shall I get your medicine from the valise, deary?" inquired Mrs. Taylor.
+
+"Not now," her visitor answered; and I wondered why she should take such
+a quick look at me.
+
+"We'll soon have yu' independent of medicine," said Lin, gallantly. "Our
+climate and scenery here has frequently raised the dead."
+
+"You're a case, anyway!" exclaimed the sick lady with rich conviction.
+
+The cow-puncher now sat himself on the edge of Tommy's bed, and, throwing
+one leg across the other, began to raise her spirits with cheerful talk.
+She steadily watched him--his face sometimes, sometimes his lounging,
+masculine figure. While he thus devoted his attentions to her, Taylor
+departed to help Tommy at the stable, and good Mrs. Taylor, busy with
+supper for all of us in the kitchen, expressed her joy at having her old
+friend of childhood for a visit after so many years.
+
+"Sickness has changed poor Katie some," said she. "But I'm hoping she'll
+get back her looks on Bear Creek."
+
+"She seems less feeble than I had understood," I remarked.
+
+"Yes, indeed! I do believe she's feeling stronger. She was that tired and
+down yesterday with the long stage-ride, and it is so lonesome! But
+Taylor and I heartened her up, and Tommy came with the mail, and to-day
+she's real spruced-up like, feeling she's among friends."
+
+"How long will she stay?" I inquired.
+
+"Just as long as ever she wants! Me and Katie hasn't met since we was
+young girls in Dubuque, for I left home when I married Taylor, and he
+brought me to this country right soon; and it ain't been like Dubuque
+much, though if I had it to do over again I'd do just the same, as Taylor
+knows. Katie and me hasn't wrote even, not till this February, for you
+always mean to and you don't. Well, it'll be like old times. Katie'll be
+most thirty-four, I expect. Yes. I was seventeen and she was sixteen the
+very month I was married. Poor thing! She ought to have got some good man
+for a husband, but I expect she didn't have any chance, for there was a
+big fam'ly o' them girls, and old Peck used to act real scandalous,
+getting drunk so folks didn't visit there evenings scarcely at all. And
+so she quit home, it seems, and got a position in the railroad
+eating-house at Sidney, and now she has poor health with feeding them big
+trains day and night."
+
+"A biscuit-shooter!" said I.
+
+Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence. "Well," said she then,
+"I'm told that's what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor
+waiter-girls. You might hear it around the switches at them division
+stations."
+
+I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.
+
+If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of
+dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for,
+and will never know. Three times a day in the brave days of old you
+sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong. You
+discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through
+doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in a
+room of tables and catsup bottles. Behind the chairs, standing attention,
+a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began immediately a
+swift chant. It hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow. In this
+inexpressible ceremony the name of every dish went hurtling into the
+next, telescoped to shapelessness. Moreover, if you stopped your Amazon
+in the middle, it dislocated her, and she merely went back and took a
+fresh start. The chant was always the same, but you never learned it. As
+soon as it began, your mind snapped shut like the upper berth in a
+Pullman. You must have uttered appropriate words--even a parrot will--for
+next you were eating things--pie, ham, hot cakes--as fast as you could.
+Twenty minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with your
+pile-driven stomach dumb with amazement. The Strasburg goose is not
+dieted with greater velocity, and "biscuit-shooter" is a grand word. Very
+likely some Homer of the railroad yards first said it--for what men upon
+the present earth so speak with imagination's tongue as we Americans?
+
+If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her
+conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue,
+marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding in
+response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her into
+convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but allowed
+the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly now and then,
+"I declare!" and "If you ain't!" Lin was most certainly engaging, if that
+was the lady's meaning. His wide-open eyes sparkled upon her, and he half
+closed them now and then to look at her more effectively. I suppose she
+was worth it to him. I have forgotten to say that she was handsome in a
+large California-fruit style. They made a good-looking pair of animals.
+But it was in the presence of Tommy that Master Lin shone more
+energetically than ever, and under such shining Tommy was transparently
+restless. He tried, and failed, to bring the conversation his way, and
+took to rearranging the mail and the furniture.
+
+"Supper's ready," he said, at length. "Come right in, Miss Peck; right in
+here. This is your seat--this one, please. Now you can see my fields out
+of the window."
+
+"You sit here," said the biscuit-shooter to Lin; and thus she was between
+them. "Them's elegant!" she presently exclaimed to Tommy. "Did you cook
+'em?"
+
+I explained that the apricots were of my preparation.
+
+"Indeed!" said she, and returned to Tommy, who had been telling her of
+his ranch, his potatoes, his horses. "And do you punch cattle, too?" she
+inquired of him.
+
+"Me?" said Tommy, slightingly; "gave it up years ago; too empty a life
+for me. I leave that to such as like it. When a man owns his own
+property"--Tommy swept his hand at the whole landscape--"he takes to
+more intellectual work."
+
+"Lickin' postage-stamps," Mr. McLean suggested, sourly.
+
+"You lick them and I cancel them," answered the postmaster; and it does
+not seem a powerful rejoinder. But Miss Peck uttered her laugh.
+
+"That's one on you," she told Lin. And throughout this meal it was Tommy
+who had her favor. She partook of his generous supplies; she listened to
+his romantic inventions, the trails he had discovered, the bears he had
+slain; and after supper it was with Tommy, and not with Lin, that she
+went for a little walk.
+
+"Katie was ever a tease," said Mrs. Taylor of her childhood friend, and
+Mr. Taylor observed that there was always safety in numbers. "She'll get
+used to the ways of this country quicker than our little school-marm,"
+said he.
+
+Mr. McLean said very little, but read the new-arrived papers. It was only
+when bedtime dispersed us, the ladies in the cabin and the men choosing
+various spots outside, that he became talkative again for a while. We lay
+in the blank--we had spread on some soft, dry sand in preference to the
+stable, where Taylor and Tommy had gone. Under the contemplative
+influence of the stars, Lin fell into generalization.
+
+"Ever notice," said he, "how whiskey and lyin' act the same on a man?"
+
+I did not feel sure that I had.
+
+"Just the same way. You keep either of 'em up long enough, and yu' get to
+require it. If Tommy didn't lie some every day, he'd get sick."
+
+I was sleepy, but I murmured assent to this, and trusted he would not go
+on.
+
+"Ever notice," said he, "how the victims of the whiskey and lyin' habit
+get to increasing the dose?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Him roping six bears!" pursued Mr. McLean, after further contemplation.
+"Or any bear. Ever notice how the worser a man's lyin' the silenter other
+men'll get? Why's that, now?"
+
+I believe that I made a faint sound to imply that I was following him.
+
+"Men don't get took in. But ladies now, they--"
+
+Here he paused again, and during the next interval of contemplation I
+sank beyond his reach.
+
+In the morning I left Riverside for Buffalo, and there or thereabouts I
+remained for a number of weeks. Miss Peck did not enter my thoughts, nor
+did I meet any one to remind me of her, until one day I stopped at the
+drug-store. It was not for drugs, but gossip, that I went. In the daytime
+there was no place like the apothecary's for meeting men and hearing the
+news. There I heard how things were going everywhere, including Bear
+Creek.
+
+All the cow-punchers liked the new girl up there, said gossip. She was a
+great addition to society. Reported to be more companionable than the
+school-marm, Miss Molly Wood, who had been raised too far east, and
+showed it. Vermont, or some such dude place. Several had been in town
+buying presents for Miss Katie Peck. Tommy Postmaster had paid high for a
+necklace of elk-tushes the government scout at McKinney sold him. Too bad
+Miss Peck did not enjoy good health. Shorty had been in only yesterday to
+get her medicine again. Third bottle. Had I heard the big joke on Lin
+McLean? He had promised her the skin of a big bear he knew the location
+of, and Tommy got the bear.
+
+Two days after this I joined one of the roundup camps at sunset. They had
+been working from Salt Creek to Bear Creek, and the Taylor ranch was in
+visiting distance from them again, after an interval of gathering and
+branding far across the country. The Virginian, the gentle-voiced
+Southerner, whom I had last seen lingering with Miss Wood, was in camp.
+Silent three-quarters of the time, as was his way, he sat gravely
+watching Lin McLean. That person seemed silent also, as was not his way
+quite so much.
+
+"Lin," said the Southerner, "I reckon you're failin'."
+
+Mr. McLean raised a sombre eye, but did not trouble to answer further.
+
+"A healthy man's laigs ought to fill his pants," pursued the Virginian.
+The challenged puncher stretched out a limb and showed his muscles with
+young pride.
+
+"And yu' cert'nly take no comfort in your food," his ingenious friend
+continued, slowly and gently.
+
+"I'll eat you a match any day and place yu' name," said Lin.
+
+"It ain't sca'cely hon'able," went on the Virginian, "to waste away
+durin' the round-up. A man owes his strength to them that hires it. If he
+is paid to rope stock he ought to rope stock, and not leave it dodge or
+pull away."
+
+"It's not many dodge my rope," boasted Lin, imprudently.
+
+"Why, they tell me as how that heifer of the Sidney-Nebraska brand got
+plumb away from yu', and little Tommy had to chase afteh her."
+
+Lin sat up angrily amid the laughter, but reclined again. "I'll improve,"
+said he, "if yu' learn me how yu' rope that Vermont stock so handy. Has
+she promised to be your sister yet?" he added.
+
+"Is that what they do?" inquired the Virginian, serenely. "I have never
+got related that way. Why, that'll make Tommy your brother-in-law, Lin!"
+
+And now, indeed, the camp laughed a loud, merciless laugh.
+
+But Lin was silent. Where everybody lives in a glass-house the victory is
+to him who throws the adroitest stone. Mr. McLean was readier witted than
+most, but the gentle, slow Virginian could be a master when he chose.
+
+"Tommy has been recountin' his wars up at the Taylors'," he now told the
+camp. "He has frequently campaigned with General Crook, General Miles,
+and General Ruger, all at onced. He's an exciting fighter, in
+conversation, and kep' us all scared for mighty nigh an hour. Miss Peck
+appeared interested in his statements."
+
+"What was you doing at the Taylors' yourself?" demanded Lin.
+
+"Visitin' Miss Wood," answered the Virginian, with entire ease. For he
+also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. "You'd ought to
+write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is
+gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and
+you would have the runnin' all to yourself."
+
+"I'll fix him yet," muttered Mr. McLean. "Him and his wars."
+
+With that he rose and left us.
+
+The next afternoon he informed me that if I was riding up the creek to
+spend the night he would go for company. In that direction we started,
+therefore, without any mention of the Taylors or Miss Peck. I was
+puzzled. Never had I seen him thus disconcerted by woman. With him woman
+had been a transient disturbance. I had witnessed a series of flighty
+romances, where the cow-puncher had come, seen, often conquered, and
+moved on. Nor had his affairs been of the sort to teach a young man
+respect. I am putting it rather mildly.
+
+For the first part of our way this afternoon he was moody, and after that
+began to speak with appalling wisdom about life. Life, he said, was a
+serious matter. Did I realize that? A man was liable to forget it. A man
+was liable to go sporting and helling around till he waked up some day
+and found all his best pleasures had become just a business. No interest,
+no surprise, no novelty left, and no cash in the bank. Shorty owed him
+fifty dollars. Shorty would be able to pay that after the round-up, and
+he, Lin, would get his time and rustle altogether some five hundred
+dollars. Then there was his homestead claim on Box Elder, and the
+surveyors were coming in this fall. No better location for a home in this
+country than Box Elder. Wood, water, fine land. All it needed was a house
+and ditches and buildings and fences, and to be planted with crops. Such
+chances and considerations should sober a man and make him careful what
+he did. "I'd take in Cheyenne on our wedding-trip, and after that I'd
+settle right down to improving Box Elder," concluded Mr. McLean,
+suddenly.
+
+His real intentions flashed upon me for the first time. I had not
+remotely imagined such a step.
+
+"Marry her!" I screeched in dismay. "Marry her!"
+
+I don't know which word was the worse to emphasize at such a moment, but
+I emphasized both thoroughly.
+
+"I didn't expect yu'd act that way," said the lover. He dropped behind me
+fifty yards and spoke no more.
+
+Not at once did I beg his pardon for the brutality I had been surprised
+into. It is one of those speeches that, once said, is said forever.
+
+But it was not that which withheld me. As I thought of the tone in which
+my friend had replied, it seemed to me sullen, rather than deeply angry
+or wounded--resentment at my opinion not of her character so much as of
+his choice! Then I began to be sorry for the fool, and schemed for a
+while how to intervene. But have you ever tried intervention? I soon
+abandoned the idea, and took a way to be forgiven, and to learn more.
+
+"Lin," I began, slowing my horse, "you must not think about what I said."
+
+"I'm thinkin' of pleasanter subjects," said he, and slowed his own horse.
+
+"Oh, look here!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Well?" said he. He allowed his horse to come within about ten yards.
+
+"Astonishment makes a man say anything," I proceeded. "And I'll say again
+you're too good for her--and I'll say I don't generally believe in the
+wife being older than the husband."
+
+"What's two years?" said Lin.
+
+I was near screeching out again, but saved myself. He was not quite
+twenty-five, and I remembered Mrs. Taylor's unprejudiced computation of
+the biscuit-shooter's years. It is a lady's prerogative, however, to
+estimate her own age.
+
+"She had her twenty-seventh birthday last month," said Lin, with
+sentiment, bringing his horse entirely abreast of mine. "I promised her a
+bear-skin."
+
+"Yes," said I, "I heard about that in Buffalo."
+
+Lin's face grew dusky with anger. "No doubt yu' heard about it," said
+he. "I don't guess yu' heard much about anything else. I ain't told the
+truth to any of 'em--but her." He looked at me with a certain hesitation.
+"I think I will," he continued. "I don't mind tellin' you."
+
+He began to speak in a strictly business tone, while he evened the coils
+of rope that hung on his saddle.
+
+"She had spoke to me about her birthday, and I had spoke to her about
+something to give her. I had offered to buy her in town whatever she
+named, and I was figuring to borrow from Taylor. But she fancied the
+notion of a bear-skin. I had mentioned about some cubs. I had found the
+cubs where the she-bear had them cached by the foot of a big boulder in
+the range over Ten Sleep, and I put back the leaves and stuff on top o'
+them little things as near as I could the way I found them, so that the
+bear would not suspicion me. For I was aiming to get her. And Miss Peck,
+she sure wanted the hide for her birthday. So I went back. The she-bear
+was off, and I crumb up inside the rock, and I waited a turruble long
+spell till the sun travelled clean around the canyon. Mrs. Bear come home
+though, a big cinnamon; and I raised my gun, but laid it down to see what
+she'd do. She scrapes around and snuffs, and the cubs start whining, and
+she talks back to 'em. Next she sits up awful big, and lifts up a cub and
+holds it to her close with both her paws, same as a person. And she
+rubbed her ear agin the cub, and the cub sort o' nipped her, and she
+cuffed the cub, and the other cub came toddlin', and away they starts
+rolling all three of 'em! I watched that for a long while. That big thing
+just nursed and played with them little cubs, beatin' em for a change
+onced in a while, and talkin', and onced in a while she'd sit up solemn
+and look all around so life-like that I near busted. Why, how was I goin'
+to spoil that? So I come away, very quiet, you bet! for I'd have hated to
+have Mrs. Bear notice me. Miss Peck, she laughed. She claimed I was
+scared to shoot."
+
+"After you had told her why it was?" said I.
+
+"Before and after. I didn't tell her first, because I felt kind of
+foolish. Then Tommy went and he killed the bear all right, and she has
+the skin now. Of course the boys joshed me a heap about gettin' beat by
+Tommy."
+
+"But since she has taken you?" said I.
+
+"She ain't said it. But she will when she understands Tommy."
+
+I fancied that the lady understood. The once I had seen her she appeared
+to me as what might be termed an expert in men, and one to understand
+also the reality of Tommy's ranch and allowance, and how greatly these
+differed from Box Elder. Probably the one thing she could not understand
+was why Lin spared the mother and her cubs. A deserted home in Dubuque, a
+career in a railroad eating-house, a somewhat vague past, and a present
+lacking context--indeed, I hoped with all my heart that Tommy would win!
+
+"Lin," said I, "I'm backing him."
+
+"Back away!" said he. "Tommy can please a woman--him and his blue eyes--
+but he don't savvy how to make a woman want him, not any better than he
+knows about killin' Injuns."
+
+"Did you hear about the Crows?" said I.
+
+"About young bucks going on the war-path? Shucks! That's put up by the
+papers of this section. They're aimin' to get Uncle Sam to order his
+troops out, and then folks can sell hay and stuff to 'em. If Tommy
+believed any Crows--" he stopped, and suddenly slapped his leg.
+
+"What's the matter now?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing." He took to singing, and his face grew roguish to its full
+extent. "What made yu' say that to me?" he asked, presently.
+
+"Say what?"
+
+"About marrying. Yu' don't think I'd better."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Onced in a while yu' tell me I'm flighty. Well, I am. Whoop-ya!"
+
+"Colts ought not to marry," said I.
+
+"Sure!" said he. And it was not until we came in sight of the Virginian's
+black horse tied in front of Miss Wood's cabin next the Taylors' that Lin
+changed the lively course of thought that was evidently filling his mind.
+
+"Tell yu'," said he, touching my arm confidentially and pointing to the
+black horse, "for all her Vermont refinement she's a woman just the same.
+She likes him dangling round her so earnest--him that no body ever saw
+dangle before. And he has quit spreein' with the boys. And what does he
+get by it? I am glad I was not raised good enough to appreciate the Miss
+Woods of this world," he added, defiantly--"except at long range."
+
+At the Taylors' cabin we found Miss Wood sitting with her admirer, and
+Tommy from Riverside come to admire Miss Peck. The biscuit-shooter might
+pass for twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her--whether
+the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company; whatever
+had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair looked
+curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and her cheeks
+were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood talking sweetly
+to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was no doubt that he
+had been "raised good enough" to appreciate her, no matter what had been
+his raising!
+
+Lin greeted every one jauntily. "How are yu', Miss Peck? How are yu',
+Tommy?" said he. "Hear the news, Tommy? Crow Injuns on the war-path."
+
+"I declare!" said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+The Virginian was about to say something, but his eye met Lin's, and then
+he looked at Tommy. Then what he did say was, "I hadn't been goin' to
+mention it to the ladies until it was right sure."
+
+"You needn't to be afraid, Miss Peck," said Tommy. "There's lots of men
+here."
+
+"Who's afraid?" said the biscuit-shooter.
+
+"Oh," said Lin, "maybe it's like most news we get in this country. Two
+weeks stale and a lie when it was fresh."
+
+"Of course," said Tommy.
+
+"Hello, Tommy!" called Taylor from the lane. "Your horse has broke his
+rein and run down the field."
+
+Tommy rose in disgust and sped after the animal.
+
+"I must be cooking supper now," said Katie, shortly.
+
+"I'll stir for yu'," said Lin, grinning at her.
+
+"Come along then," said she; and they departed to the adjacent kitchen.
+
+Miss Wood's gray eyes brightened with mischief. She looked at her
+Virginian, and she looked at me.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "I used to be so afraid that when Bear Creek
+wasn't new any more it might become dull!"
+
+"Miss Peck doesn't find it dull either," said I.
+
+Molly Wood immediately assumed a look of doubt. "But mightn't it become
+just--just a little trying to have two gentlemen so very--determined, you
+know?"
+
+"Only one is determined," said the Virginian
+
+Molly looked inquiring.
+
+"Lin is determined Tommy shall not beat him. That's all it amounts to."
+
+"Dear me, what a notion!"
+
+"No, ma'am, no notion. Tommy--well, Tommy is considered harmless, ma'am.
+A cow-puncher of reputation in this country would cert'nly never let
+Tommy get ahaid of him that way."
+
+"It's pleasant to know sometimes how much we count!" exclaimed Molly.
+
+"Why, ma'am," said the Virginian, surprised at her flash of indignation,
+"where is any countin' without some love?"
+
+"Do you mean to say that Mr. McLean does not care for Miss Peck?"
+
+"I reckon he thinks he does. But there is a mighty wide difference
+between thinkin' and feelin', ma'am."
+
+I saw Molly's eyes drop from his, and I saw the rose deepen in her
+cheeks. But just then a loud voice came from the kitchen.
+
+"You, Lin, if you try any of your foolin' with me, I'll histe yu's over
+the jiste!"
+
+"All cow-punchers--" I attempted to resume.
+
+"Quit now, Lin McLean," shouted the voice, "or I'll put yus through that
+window, and it shut."
+
+"Well, Miss Peck, I'm gettin' most a full dose o' this treatment. Ever
+since yu' come I've been doing my best. And yu' just cough in my face.
+And now I'm going to quit and cough back."
+
+"Would you enjoy walkin' out till supper, ma'am?" inquired the Virginian
+as Molly rose. "You was speaking of gathering some flowers yondeh."
+
+"Why, yes," said Molly, blithely. "And you'll come?" she added to me.
+
+But I was on the Virginian's side. "I must look after my horse," said I,
+and went down to the corral.
+
+Day was slowly going as I took my pony to the water. Corncliff Mesa,
+Crowheart Butte, these shone in the rays that came through the canyon. The
+canyon's sides lifted like tawny castles in the same light. Where I walked
+the odor of thousands of wild roses hung over the margin where the
+thickets grew. High in the upper air, magpies were sailing across the
+silent blue. Somewhere I could hear Tommy explaining loudly how he and
+General Crook had pumped lead into hundreds of Indians; and when supper-
+time brought us all back to the door he was finishing the account to Mrs.
+Taylor. Molly and the Virginian arrived bearing flowers, and he was
+saying that few cow-punchers had any reason for saving their money.
+
+"But when you get old?" said she.
+
+"We mostly don't live long enough to get old, ma'am," said he, simply.
+"But I have a reason, and I am saving."
+
+"Give me the flowers," said Molly. And she left him to arrange them on
+the table as Lin came hurrying out.
+
+"I've told her," said he to the Southerner and me, "that I've asked her
+twiced, and I'm going to let her have one more chance. And I've told her
+that if it's a log cabin she's marryin', why Tommy is a sure good wooden
+piece of furniture to put inside it. And I guess she knows there's not
+much wooden furniture about me. I want to speak to you." He took the
+Virginian round the corner. But though he would not confide in me, I
+began to discern something quite definite at supper.
+
+"Cattle men will lose stock if the Crows get down as far as this," he
+said, casually, and Mrs. Taylor suppressed a titter.
+
+"Ain't it hawses the're repawted as running off?" said the Virginian.
+
+"Chap come into the round-up this afternoon," said Lin. "But he was
+rattled, and told a heap o' facts that wouldn't square."
+
+"Of course they wouldn't," said Tommy, haughtily.
+
+"Oh, there's nothing in it," said Lin, dismissing the subject.
+
+"Have yu' been to the opera since we went to Cheyenne, Mrs. Taylor?"
+
+Mrs. Taylor had not.
+
+"Lin," said the Virginian, "did yu ever see that opera Cyarmen?"
+
+"You bet. Fellow's girl quits him for a bullfighter. Gets him up in the
+mountains, and quits him. He wasn't much good--not in her class o'
+sports, smugglin' and such."
+
+"I reckon she was doubtful of him from the start. Took him to the
+mount'ins to experiment, where they'd not have interruption," said the
+Virginian.
+
+"Talking of mountains," said Tommy, "this range here used to be a great
+place for Indians till we ran 'em out with Terry. Pumped lead into the
+red sons-of-guns."
+
+"You bet," said Lin. "Do yu' figure that girl tired of her bull-fighter
+and quit him, too?"
+
+"I reckon," replied the Virginian, "that the bull-fighter wore better."
+
+"Fans and taverns and gypsies and sportin'," said Lin. "My! but I'd like
+to see them countries with oranges and bull-fights! Only I expect Spain,
+maybe, ain't keepin' it up so gay as when 'Carmen' happened."
+
+The table-talk soon left romance and turned upon steers and alfalfa, a
+grass but lately introduced in the country. No further mention was made
+of the hostile Crows, and from this I drew the false conclusion that
+Tommy had not come up to their hopes in the matter of reciting his
+campaigns. But when the hour came for those visitors who were not
+spending the night to take their leave, Taylor drew Tommy aside with me,
+and I noticed the Virginian speaking with Molly Wood, whose face showed
+diversion.
+
+"Don't seem to make anything of it," whispered Taylor to Tommy, "but the
+ladies have got their minds on this Indian truck."
+
+"Why, I'll just explain--" began Tommy.
+
+"Don't," whispered Lin, joining us. "Yu' know how women are. Once they
+take a notion, why, the more yu' deny the surer they get. Now, yu' see,
+him and me" (he jerked his elbow towards the Virginian) "must go back to
+camp, for we're on second relief."
+
+"And the ladies would sleep better knowing there was another man in the
+house," said Taylor.
+
+"In that case," said Tommy, "I--"
+
+"Yu' see," said Lin, "they've been told about Ten Sleep being burned two
+nights ago."
+
+"It ain't!" cried Tommy.
+
+"Why, of course it ain't," drawled the ingenious Lin. "But that's what I
+say. You and I know Ten Sleep's all right, but we can't report from our
+own knowledge seeing it all right, and there it is. They get these
+nervous notions."
+
+"Just don't appear to make anything special of not going back to
+Riverside," repeated Taylor, "but--"
+
+"But just kind of stay here," said Lin.
+
+"I will!" exclaimed Tommy. "Of course, I'm glad to oblige."
+
+I suppose I was slow-sighted. All this pains seemed to me larger than its
+results. They had imposed upon Tommy, yes. But what of that? He was to be
+kept from going back to Riverside until morning. Unless they proposed to
+visit his empty cabin and play tricks--but that would be too childish,
+even for Lin McLean, to say nothing of the Virginian, his occasional
+partner in mischief.
+
+"In spite of the Crows," I satirically told the ladies, "I shall sleep
+outside, as I intended. I've no use for houses at this season."
+
+The cinches of the horses were tightened, Lin and the Virginian laid a
+hand on their saddle-horns, swung up, and soon all sound of the galloping
+horses had ceased. Molly Wood declined to be nervous and crossed to her
+little neighbor cabin; we all parted, and (as always in that blessed
+country) deep sleep quickly came to me.
+
+I don't know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in
+half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long, wild yell
+now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no pistol--
+nothing. In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought was
+"House! House!" and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to the
+cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I
+understood. I saw the Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw
+his teeth as he smiled. I hastened to my blankets, and returned more
+decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round the
+cabin, crazy with their youth. The door was opened, and Taylor
+courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He fired at the sky
+immediately.
+
+"B' gosh!" he roared. "That's one." He fired again. "Out and at 'em.
+They're running."
+
+At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
+white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots
+by the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted and
+joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about with
+them, helping the din.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Taylor!" said a voice. "I didn't think it of you." It was Molly
+Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
+She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.
+
+"Stop, friends!" said Taylor, gasping. "She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
+I'd hate to have Bobbie--"
+
+"Speak to your papa," said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.
+
+"Well, I'll be gol-darned," said Taylor, surveying his costume, "if Lin
+McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!"
+
+"Where has Tommy got?" said Mrs. Taylor.
+
+"Didn't yus see him?" said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word in
+all this.
+
+We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
+Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
+plates were rattling up and down like castanets.
+
+There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.
+
+"Well," murmured the Virginian to himself, "if I could have foresaw, I'd
+not--it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self."
+
+He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
+perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything, and
+presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent cabin,
+mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the night at
+Riverside, after all.
+
+Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
+table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
+one when you think of it.
+
+I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian
+how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
+bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the peace.
+She was astride the horse he had brought for her.
+
+"Yes, he beat Tommy," said the Virginian. "Some folks, anyway, get what
+they want in this hyeh world."
+
+From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than Tommy.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
+
+Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there
+was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this
+that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
+fertility of the soil--when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
+made--with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying to
+raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he
+arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow
+here--with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that
+anything could fly--with wings. Then we would lead such a man out and
+show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if he was
+thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five
+thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these
+Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the
+Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him the
+glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the
+Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West
+far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a
+pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's
+narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size
+of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside
+Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us
+that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to
+feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had
+travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to
+meet him.
+
+"For purposes of amusement," he said, "I'll admit anything you claim for
+this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an
+investment I prefer the East. Am I to see any cowboys?"
+
+"You shall," I said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do
+something to him "for purposes of amusement."
+
+"You fellows come up with me to my office," said the Governor. "I'll look
+at my mail, and show you round." So we went with him through the heat and
+sun.
+
+"What's that?" inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
+
+"That is our park," said I. "Of course it's merely in embryo. It's
+wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi--" I checked
+myself.
+
+But Ogden said "with irrigation" for me, and I was entirely sorry he had
+come.
+
+We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his
+letters over.
+
+"Here you are, Ogden," said he. "Here's the way we hump ahead out here."
+And he read us the following:
+
+                           "MAGAW, KANSAS, July 5, 188--
+
+"Hon. Amory W. Baker:
+
+"Sir,--Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged
+drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad
+to furnish you with a reasonably shower. I have operated successfully in
+Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to
+exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover,
+as I said, merely my necessary expenses--say $350 (three hundred and
+fifty dollars)--for half an inch I will guarantee you that quantity of
+rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction of
+the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of
+what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require
+twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
+
+                           "I am, respectfully yours,
+                                "Robert Hilbrun"
+
+"Will the Legislature do it?" inquired Ogden in good faith.
+
+The Governor laughed boisterously. "I guess it wouldn't be
+constitutional," said he.
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Ogden.
+
+"My dear man," the Governor protested, "I know we're new, and our women
+vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively
+funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would fly
+right into my back hair." Barker was also new as Governor.
+
+"Do you have Senators here too?" said Ogden, raising his eyebrows. "What
+do they look like? Are they females?" And the Governor grew more
+boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern
+men were certainly "out of sight". Ogden, however, was thoughtful.
+
+"I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself," he said.
+
+"That's an idea!" cried the Governor. "Nothing unconstitutional about
+that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars--"
+
+"I'll put up a hundred," said Ogden, promptly. "I'm out for a Western
+vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen."
+
+The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help
+of some lively minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised. "He
+won't care," said the Governor, "whether it's a private enterprise or a
+municipal step, so long as he gets his money."
+
+"He won't get it, I'm afraid," said Ogden. "But if he succeeds in
+tempting Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you
+call those people there on the horses?"
+
+We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and looking
+out over the plain toward Fort Russell. "That is a cow-puncher and his
+bride," I answered, recognizing the couple.
+
+"Real cow-puncher?"
+
+"Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean."
+
+"Real bride?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"She's riding straddle!" exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his
+glasses. "Why do you object to their union being holy?"
+
+I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady
+precipitately and against my advice.
+
+"I suppose he knew his business," observed Ogden.
+
+"That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her--and
+know him."
+
+Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded
+to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at
+meeting with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked
+at her, and I instantly knew that Lin--the fool!--had confided to her my
+disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is
+your standing with your old friend's new wife.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. McLean," said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his
+horse.
+
+"How're are yu', doctor," said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the
+Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg
+at Drybone. "Let me make yu' known to Mrs. McLean," pursued the husband.
+
+The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to
+a Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed
+haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow
+would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at
+her, extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out toward him her
+big, dumb, red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of
+compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
+
+"I say," Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the
+flesh image, "I'm glad I came." The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom
+also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and
+cartridge-belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high
+white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of
+course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man that
+wore them.
+
+"Well," said he, "I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in town?
+Circus come yet?"
+
+"No," said I. "Are you going to make a long stay?"
+
+The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. "Till
+we're tired of it, I guess," said he, with hesitation. It was the first
+time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I
+felt a rising hate for the ruby-checked, large-eyed eating-house lady,
+the biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty,
+irrepressible spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him,
+and now she was going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at
+her too, thoughtfully.
+
+"Say, Lin," I said, "if you stay here long enough you'll see a big show."
+And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I told him
+of the rain-maker.
+
+"Shucks!" said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely
+entertained at our venture. "Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me come
+in"; and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised, he was
+hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
+
+"Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess," spoke the
+image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I
+know that Lin did. The image continued: "Some folks and their money are
+soon parted"--she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I
+was sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable
+opinion of her--"but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged
+ap!" This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says the
+husband immediately started off on a run.
+
+At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some
+railroad ties, exclaiming: "Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I
+came."
+
+"That's who she is!" said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at
+once. "I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband
+somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!" he
+continued to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated "Bigamy!" "Lots of them
+marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on to a
+new man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on--"
+
+"One moment, I beg," said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. "What does the
+law--"
+
+"Law?" said the Governor. "Look at that place!" He swept his hand towards
+the vast plains and the mountains. "Ninety-five thousand square miles of
+that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen yet on
+top of the Rocky Mountains."
+
+"I see," said the New-Yorker. "But--but--well let A and B represent
+first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does A know
+about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?"
+
+"Can't say," the Governor answered, jovially. "Can't generalize. Depends
+on heaps of things-- love--money-- Did you go to college? Well, let A
+minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared--"
+
+"Oh, come to lunch," I said. "Barker, do you really know the first
+husband is alive?"
+
+"Wasn't dead last winter." And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss Katie
+Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was wooed and won
+by a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder, a bar-tender, a
+freight hand, and was then hauling poles for the government. During his
+necessary absences from home she, too, went out-of-doors. This he often
+discovered, and would beat her, and she would then also beat him. After
+the beatings one of them would always leave the other forever. Thus was
+Sidney kept in small-talk until Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come
+back. "Lusk," said the Governor, finishing his story, "cried around the
+saloons for a couple of days, and then went on hauling poles for the
+government, till at last he said he'd heard of a better job south, and
+next we knew of him he was round Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor
+bird. Owes me ten dollars."
+
+"Well," I said, "none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay
+with Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs.
+McLean."
+
+"You'll notice," said the Governor, "how she has got him under in three
+weeks. Old hand, you see."
+
+"Poor Lin!" I said.
+
+"Lucky, I call him," said the Governor. "He can quit her."
+
+"Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?"
+
+"She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn pretty
+quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip. Hello! here
+comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden, of New York, Mr.
+Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden." The Governor's
+eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
+
+"Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your
+acquaintance," said the signal-service officer.
+
+"Jode, when is it going to rain?" said the Governor, anxiously.
+
+Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He has
+the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of
+representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes
+themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in--I think
+he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton Manigault
+Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then, but his
+health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black; his face
+was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a spout--
+the same narrow size all the way down--and his voice was as dry and light
+as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had constantly
+challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with his dignity, and
+they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted apologies that
+entirely met his exactions, and gave them much satisfaction also. Nobody
+would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he came to see that Wyoming
+was a game invented after his book of rules was published, and he looked
+on, but could not play the game. He had fallen, along with other
+incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and he passed his
+careful, precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
+
+He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina impressiveness.
+"There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing pressure," he
+said.
+
+"Well, that's what I thought," said the joyous Governor, "so I'm going to
+whoop her up."
+
+"What do you expect to whoop up, sir?"
+
+"Atmosphere, and all that," said the Governor. "Whole business has got to
+get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker."
+
+"Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir," said Jode, who enjoyed Barker
+as some people enjoy a symphony, without understanding it. But after we
+had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter
+had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers
+with him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position.
+"Have your joke, sir," he said, waving a thin, clean hand, "but I decline
+to meet him."
+
+"Hilbrun?" said the Governor, staring.
+
+"If that's his name--yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and the
+Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow."
+
+"Glory!" said the Governor. "Well, I suppose not. I see your point, Jode.
+I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of
+Physicians I've felt that way about homeopathy and the faith-cure. All
+very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in
+consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow--too
+slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac
+does its business by is out of date."
+
+"I am quite serious, sir," said Jode. "And let me express my
+gratification that you do see my point." So we changed the subject.
+
+Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond those
+who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed curiosity about
+Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in the street that he was
+disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness toward the enterprise. "But the boys
+would fly right at it and stay with it if the round-up was near town, you
+bet," said he.
+
+He was walking alone. "How's Mrs. McLean to-day?" I inquired.
+
+"She's well," said Lin, turning his eye from mine. "Who's your friend all
+bugged up in English clothes?"
+
+"About as good a man as you," said I, "and more cautious."
+
+"Him and his eye-glasses!" said the sceptical puncher, still looking away
+from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor. That
+excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his teeth
+shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
+
+"Telegram from Hilbrun," he shouted; "be here to-morrow"; and he hastened
+up.
+
+"Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be
+private," added Ogden. "Great, isn't it?"
+
+"You bet!" said Lin, brightening. The New Yorker's urbane but obvious
+excitement mollified Mr. McLean. "Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?" said
+he.
+
+"Never. Have you?"
+
+Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced
+excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
+
+"We're going to show the telegram to Jode," said the Governor; and he and
+Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
+
+"Well, I must be getting along myself," said Lin; but he continued
+walking slowly with me. "Where're yu' bound?" he said.
+
+"Nowhere in particular," said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a
+little more.
+
+"You're going to meet the train to-morrow?" said he.
+
+"The train? Oh yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?"
+
+"Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years."
+
+"Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's the
+rule. Don't you?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?"
+
+"No. But it'll be fun to see him try."
+
+"Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to-morrow."
+
+"See you to-morrow, Lin."
+
+He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall, depressed figure.
+A hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after
+him, pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the
+club, telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had
+inquired for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that
+he had lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying "I told
+you so" to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had
+not come so home to me until our little walk together just now along the
+boards.
+
+At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty--a
+particular drink, the Allston cocktail. "It's the bitters that does the
+trick," he was saying, but saw me and called out: "You ought to have been
+with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read it
+through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with his
+anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get out he
+sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so I said,
+'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And Jode, he
+quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your despatch
+is genuwine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!" And the Governor
+slapped his knee. "Why, he's so set against Hilbrun," he continued, "I
+guess if he knew of something he could explode to stop rain he'd let her
+fly!"
+
+"No, he wouldn't," said I. "He'd not consider that honorable."
+
+"That's so," the Governor assented. "Jode'll play fair."
+
+It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise--a game between a
+well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan.
+And it was the charlatan had our sympathy--as all charlatans, whether
+religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the
+average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and
+I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary and
+the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the cart,
+and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned out an
+unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not remember
+afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it was a hot
+day, as if he had no relations with the weather; and what he put into the
+cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance to the eye.
+He desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his apparatus in
+the building provided for him; and we set out for it at once. It was an
+untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant might cut a hole
+in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for the first time--a
+tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak mouth. "This is Mr.
+Lusk," said the rain-maker; and we shook hands, Ogden and I exchanging a
+glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill Street--or Capitol Avenue,
+as it has become named since Cheyenne has grown fuller of pomp and
+emptier of prosperity--and I thought we made an unusual procession: the
+Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the way to the barn; the cart,
+and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his packed-up mysteries; McLean
+and Lusk, walking together in unconscious bigamy; and in the rear, Odgen
+nudging me in the ribs. That it was the correct Lusk we had with us I
+felt sure from his incompetent, healthy, vacant appearance, strong-bodied
+and shiftless--the sort of man to weary of one trade and another, and
+make a failure of wife beating between whiles. In Twenty-fourth Street--
+the town's uttermost rim--the Governor met us, and stared at Lusk.
+"Christopher!" was his single observation; but he never forgets a face--
+cannot afford to, now that he is in politics; and, besides, Lusk
+remembered him. You seldom really forget a man to whom you owe ten
+dollars.
+
+"So you've quit hauling poles?" said the Governor.
+
+"Nothing in it, sir," said Lusk.
+
+"Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?" asked the
+rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
+
+"What! going to throw your bombs through it?" said the Governor, smiling
+heartily.
+
+But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system,
+but a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. "Not that the
+bomb don't produce first-class results at times and under circumstances,"
+he said, "but it's uncertain and costly."
+
+The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told us
+was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The
+owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe
+hole, which saved delay. "And what day would you prefer the shower?" said
+Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
+
+"Any day would do," the Governor said.
+
+This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had
+business to detain him from witnessing the shower--though it seemed to me
+that on week-days, too, business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable as
+this. We gave the strangers some information about the town, and left
+them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the
+stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry
+and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
+
+I saw a sorry spectacle in the street--the bridegroom and the bride
+shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently
+paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a scarlet
+parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of purchase
+on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with splendor,
+like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as well have
+been behind, and his bearing was so different from his wonted
+happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say,
+"Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk." But it was "Mrs. McLean" I said, of course.
+She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, "Come on, Lin," something
+like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a
+good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, "It takes a woman to know
+what to buy for house-keepin,"; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared
+him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in
+keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider
+to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were
+only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but
+one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs. Lusk,
+perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant
+rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the north
+corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at all,
+haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
+
+On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind
+building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay
+the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course,
+sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a
+contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that
+pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by
+Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled
+about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing.
+The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the
+twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for
+chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a
+doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether
+there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the barn,
+snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be chlorine,
+the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part responsible;
+and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The world was as
+still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever; and the sky
+over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours. This tenacity in
+the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official pleasure. We could
+tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor reminded him that no
+rain was contracted for until the next day, he mentioned that the
+approach of a storm is something that modern science is able to ascertain
+long in advance; and he bade us come to his office whenever we pleased,
+and see for ourselves what science said. This was, at any rate, something
+to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him about five. Lin McLean
+joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering alone in the street, and
+he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on friends. I saw that he did not
+know how to spend the short recess or holiday he was having. He seemed to
+cling to the society of others, and with them for the time regain his
+gayer mind. He had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his
+side, found pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and
+cow-punchers. Jode received us at the signal-service office, and began to
+show us his instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector.
+
+"A hair hygrometer," he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it.
+"The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of a
+prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the
+divided arc of--"
+
+"What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?" called out the Governor,
+who had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the
+tubes and dials. "What will this one do?" he asked, and poked at a wet
+paper disc. But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had to do
+with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention wandered,
+and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly revolved and set
+a number of dial hands going different ways. "Hi!" said the Governor,
+delighted. "Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air velocity in feet.
+Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What you'll need,
+Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes."
+
+"I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor," Jode retorted at once.
+"And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See
+there." He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as
+crystal. "An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen," Jode
+continued--though none of us would have said anything like that--"but
+unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well
+corroborated, as you will find you must admit." Jode's voice was almost
+threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked
+passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers; I
+caught the fleeting sound of words like "meniscus" and "terrestrial
+minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some
+calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand--a series
+of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers all
+over the United States. He read each one through from date of signature,
+and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. "And I tell
+you," Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, "there's no chance of
+precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,"--he was shrieking jubilantly--
+"there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!"
+
+We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. "Gee whiz!" said
+the Governor. "I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use."
+
+We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated
+scientist. "That's what they all say," he said. "I'll do my talking
+to-morrow."
+
+"If any of you gentlemen, or your friends," said Assistant Lusk, stepping
+up, "feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to accommodate
+you."
+
+"What do yu' want this evenin'?" said Lin McLean, promptly.
+
+"Five to one," said Lusk.
+
+"Go yu' in twenties," said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived
+this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out--or what of
+it still survived his bride's shopping. "Will you hold stakes, doctor?"
+he said to the Governor.
+
+But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five
+to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and
+then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered
+our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next
+morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a
+universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes
+instantly whipped out his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and
+disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but
+was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
+
+Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze anywhere,
+and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was freely
+offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so she
+might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed
+husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad
+of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented
+their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that
+it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
+
+The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside the
+hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube, the
+possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the
+extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one
+restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella.
+In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs.
+Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast
+progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the
+well-known legend, "I am somewhat of a liar myself." And all the while
+the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the
+certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came
+from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with a
+chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new
+indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden,
+padded, dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They
+blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all, and
+ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those
+rapid, unconvincing weather changes of the drama.
+
+Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things on
+earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized upon
+Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual
+punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger
+and acquaintance: "It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me"' And the
+crowd would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as he
+went proclaiming to the world. "A failure, sir! The fellow's an impostor,
+as I well knew. It's no half-inch!" Which was true.
+
+"What have you got to say to that?" we asked Hilbrun, swarming around
+him.
+
+"If you'll just keep cool," said he--"it's only the first instalment. In
+about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest."
+
+Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above
+open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no
+herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously.
+Gray, respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences and
+sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down door-steps,
+women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the chattering Jode
+flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge Burrage apostrophized
+Providence in his front yard, with the postmaster's label still pinned to
+his back. Nobody minded the sluicing downpour--this second instalment was
+much more of a thing than the first--and Hilbrun alone kept a calm
+exterior--the face of the man who lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an
+impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no means thus
+proof against success I saw him put a bottle back in his pocket, his face
+already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the
+rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded toward him, extending the
+hand of congratulation. "Mr. Hilbrun," said he, "I am Judge Burrage--the
+Honorable T. Coleman Burrage--and I will say that I am most favorably
+impressed with your shower."
+
+"His shower!" yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
+
+"Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu'?" said Lin McLean, grinning.
+
+"I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen," said Jode, ignoring the
+facetious puncher.
+
+"You're mistaken," said Hilbrun, sharply.
+
+"It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch," said Lin.
+
+"If he's short he don't get his money," said some ignoble subscriber
+
+"Yes, he will," said the Governor, "or I'm a short. He's earned it."
+
+"You bet "' said Lin. "Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu',
+doctor, I'll chip--Shucks!" Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket; he
+remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now possessed
+possibly two dollars in silver, all told. "I can't chip in, doctor," he
+said. "That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's filling up on the
+prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest show I've ever saw.
+You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!" And Lin clapped the rain-maker on
+the shoulder, exulting. He had been too well entertained to care what he
+had in his pocket, and his wife had not yet occurred to him.
+
+They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under
+half an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we
+stood talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to
+Jode, saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously with
+these, riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out the
+rain had flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from as
+far as thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a
+cloud. It staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the rain-maker, "I'm packed up, and my train'll
+be along soon--would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the
+word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?"
+
+Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely performed
+his side of the contract.
+
+"I think different, gentlemen," said he. "But I'll unpack and let that
+train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay
+me" (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the
+fence) "I'll flood your town."
+
+In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in the
+total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards and
+precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more
+unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed
+over.
+
+"I'm obliged," said Hilbrun, simply.
+
+"If I had foreseen, gentlemen," said Jode, too deeply grieved now to feel
+anger, "that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing your
+money through this--this absurd occurrence, I would have declined to help
+you. It becomes my duty," he continued, turning coldly to the inebriated
+Lusk, "to hand this to you, sir." And the assistant lurchingly stuffed
+his stakes away.
+
+"It's worth it," said Lin. "He's welcome to my cash."
+
+"What's that you say, Lin McLean?" It was the biscuit-shooter, and she
+surged to the front.
+
+"I'm broke. He's got it. That's all," said Lin, briefly.
+
+"Broke! You!" She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a
+preliminary howl.
+
+At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. "It's my darling Kate,"
+he said. "Why, Kate!"
+
+The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean;
+for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first
+wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying
+to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at
+sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off.
+The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and
+affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel,
+indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at
+Lin. "Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you sage-brush
+bigamist!" is what the marvelous female said.
+
+"Bigamist?" repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. "I ain't," he said to
+Ogden and me. "I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her."
+
+"Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife
+before ever I come acrosst yus."
+
+"You and him?" murmured the puncher.
+
+"Her and me," whimpered Lusk. "Sidney." He sat up with a limp, confiding
+stare at everybody.
+
+"Sidney who?" said Lin.
+
+"No, no," corrected Lusk, crossly--"Sidney, Nebraska."
+
+The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice.
+But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
+
+"Who are yu', anyway--when yu' ain't drunk?" demanded Lin.
+
+"He's as good a man as you, and better," snorted the guardian angel.
+"Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find."
+
+"Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska--" Lin began.
+
+"No, no," corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew--"Jim."
+
+"Good-bye, gentlemen," said the rain-maker. "That's the west-bound. I'm
+perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at
+Salt Lake City."
+
+"You are?" shouted Lin McLean. "Him and Jim's going to work it again! For
+goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!"
+
+At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of
+the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt
+Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten, and
+ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his
+duties should detain him. But Jode went!
+
+"Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen," said he to Ogden, McLean,
+and me, "and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure."
+
+"Which way are yu' bettin'?" Lin asked.
+
+"With my principles, sir," answered the little signal-service officer.
+
+"I expect I ain't got any," said the puncher. "It's Jim I'm backin' this
+time."
+
+"See here," said I; "I want to talk to you." We went into another car,
+and I did.
+
+"And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?" the
+puncher said.
+
+"Do you mean I ought to have--"
+
+"Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all the
+same. Yu' have good friends, and all that." He looked out of the window."
+Laramie already!" he commented, and got out and walked by himself on the
+platform until we had started again. "Yu' have good friends," he pursued,
+settling himself so his long legs were stretched and comfortable, "and
+they tell yu' things, and you tell them things. And when it don't make no
+particular matter one way or the other, yu' give 'em your honest opinion
+and talk straight to 'em, and they'll come to you the same way. So that
+when yu're ridin' the range alone sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things
+over on top maybe of some dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about
+some fellow yu' know mighty well, 'There's a man is a good friend of
+mine.' And yu' mean it. And it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as
+onced in a while they're bound to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where
+is the man then--your good friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be.
+Standin' off, keepin' his mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail
+out. If he tried to show it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks!
+Circumstances have showed me the trail this time, you bet!" And the
+puncher's face, which had been sombre, grew lively, and he laid a
+friendly hand on my knee.
+
+"The trail's pretty simple," said I.
+
+"You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu'," said Lin, with the air
+of having made a discovery, "when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs in
+this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his dyin'.
+I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell their
+wives."
+
+"Never was married," said I.
+
+"Well--no more was I. Let's go to bed." And Lin shook my hand, and gave
+me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
+
+At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western
+holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against
+rain--only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free. Indeed;
+the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine have a
+nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the sights:
+floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of the
+Tabernacle, seeing frescos of saints in robes speaking from heaven to
+Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm-hand, and in the
+street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the 
+new--or perhaps I should say the original--husband and wife.
+
+"She's corralled Sidney's cash!" said the delighted Lin. "He can't bet
+nothing on this shower."
+
+And then, after all, this time--it didn't rain!
+
+Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased
+a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went somewhere
+else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the money,
+retained him with her.
+
+"Good luck to yu', Sidney!" said Lin, speaking to him for the first time
+since Cheyenne. "I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married." He
+paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that
+she threw after him.
+
+Jode also felt "a heap better." Legitimate science had triumphed. To-day,
+most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a coincidence. South
+Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin the few dollars that
+I had lent the puncher.
+
+"And what will you do now?" I said to Lin.
+
+"Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll
+keep a single man."
+
+
+
+A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
+
+The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
+lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it
+between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew
+absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a
+slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be
+more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children to
+whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had put
+off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom, and
+now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely
+planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround
+him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed from
+a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into town
+from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the others,
+rounded the Capitol's enclosure, and, approaching with radiant
+countenance leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again
+greeted him with a hilarious "Hello, Doc!"
+
+Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several
+years, hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and, inquiring
+who might be the other riders behind, was told that they were Shorty,
+Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. "And dandies to hit town
+with," Mr. McLean added. "Red-hot."
+
+"I am acquainted with them," assented his Excellency.
+
+"We've been ridin' trail for twelve weeks," the cow-puncher continued,
+"makin' our beds down anywheres, and eatin' the same old chuck every day.
+So we've shook fried beef and heifer's delight, and we're goin' to feed
+high."
+
+Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
+holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
+their coming rites.
+
+"We've soured on scenery," he finished, in his drastic idiom. "We're sick
+of moonlight and cow-dung, and we're heeled for a big time."
+
+"Call on me," remarked the Governor, cheerily, "when you're ready for
+bromides and sulphates."
+
+"I ain't box-headed no more," protested Mr. McLean; "I've got maturity,
+Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them
+hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
+That's my rule."
+
+"That your rule, too?" inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye, and
+Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
+expressionless upon their horses.
+
+"We ain't talkin', we're waitin'," observed Chalkeye; and the three
+cynics smiled amiably.
+
+"Well, Doc, see yu' again," said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
+brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or
+came up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the
+unsuspecting Governor.
+
+"What's your hurry?" said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty manner.
+"Come along with me."
+
+"Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?"
+
+"Christmasing," replied Fate.
+
+"Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?"
+
+"Yes; I'm buying toys."
+
+"Toys! You? What for?"
+
+"Oh, some kids."
+
+"Yourn?" screeched Lin, precipitately.
+
+His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
+for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he
+held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. "Not mine, I'm happy to
+say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me uncle,
+and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think it's a
+girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these little
+folks at Christmas they'd be wondering--not the kids, they just break
+your toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder--'What's the
+matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on us?'--that's
+where the strain comes!" he broke off, facing Mr. McLean with another
+spacious laugh.
+
+But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran on
+exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
+intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
+
+"That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
+Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both
+outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
+drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a stick,
+and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too much, and
+you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie, and--well,
+I'm just in for my annual circus this afternoon! You're in luck.
+Christmas don't trouble a chap fixed like you."
+
+Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
+
+"A chap fixed like you!" The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. "No,
+sure." He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
+going down the road. "That's a new idea--Christmas," he murmured, for it
+was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
+his first long trousers.
+
+"Comes once a year pretty regular," remarked the prosperous Governor.
+"Seems often when you pay the bill."
+
+"I haven't made a Christmas gift," pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
+"not for--for--Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know anybody
+that has any right to look for such a thing from me." This was indeed a
+new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.
+
+"Gee whiz!" said Barker, briskly, "there goes twelve o'clock. I've got to
+make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!"
+
+His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
+in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with
+the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
+imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he
+struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some
+omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look
+up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him
+go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his speed when Lin
+overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they took a side
+street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and wrote it as
+he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and met face to
+face with Mr. McLean.
+
+"The boys are seein' after my horse," Lin rapidly began, "and I've got to
+meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu' see,
+and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--" Here Mr.
+McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. "Doc, I'd
+like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know."
+
+The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind, and
+was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
+selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple of
+dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an imperfect
+honesty that he said, "You'll help me a heap."
+
+And Lin, quite sincere, replied, "Thank yu'."
+
+So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
+Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
+good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
+the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has
+been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall; the
+Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
+Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as young
+as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
+thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known the
+cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without breeding
+contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder and drew
+him among the petticoats and toys.
+
+Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
+not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
+world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
+together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
+children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
+the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin saw
+them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
+hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
+thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of
+the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that
+undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human
+face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding
+eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children escaped
+from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and
+meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
+rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
+sound of musical boxes.
+
+Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
+human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
+talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
+and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
+knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
+must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
+much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
+ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that
+his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step
+toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have
+descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved
+thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous
+whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier.
+But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such
+parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon
+their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a
+spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving
+needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of him, he was locked
+outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural press of customers,
+long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and
+now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished, he was ready to go on
+to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean. He found him obliterated
+in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still
+as the frosty saint.
+
+"He looks livelier than you do," said the hearty Governor. "'Fraid it's
+been slow waiting."
+
+"No," replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. "No, I guess not."
+
+This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
+"You never did lie to me," he said, "long as I've known you. Well, never
+mind. I've got some real advice to ask you now."
+
+At this Mr. McLean's face grew more alert. "Say Doc," said he, "what do
+yu' want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?"
+
+"A big practice--big enough to interfere with my politics."
+
+"What else? Things and truck, I mean."
+
+"Oh--nothing I'll get. People don't give things much to fellows like me."
+
+"Don't they? Don't they?"
+
+"Why, you and Santa Claus weren't putting up any scheme on my stocking?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"I believe you're in earnest!" cried his Excellency. "That's simply
+rich!" Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town "heeled for
+a big time," finds that presents are all the rage, and must immediately
+give somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous Frontier! So
+thought the good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial misconception.
+"My dear fellow," he added, meaning as well as possible, "I don't want
+you to spend your money on me."
+
+"I've got plenty all right," said Lin, shortly.
+
+"Plenty's not the point. I'll take as many drinks as you please with you.
+You didn't expect anything from me?"
+
+"That ain't--that don't--"
+
+"There! Of course you didn't. Then, what are you getting proud about?
+Here's our shop." They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
+counters. "Now," pursued the Governor, "this is for a very particular
+friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?"
+
+They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
+number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision
+after one look. "That," said he, and laid a large muscular hand upon the
+Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and Lin
+pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be sound,
+or, at least, it was at one with the Governor's; but now they learned
+that there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
+
+The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. "I know that
+Tennyson is what she--is what's wanted," he muttered; and, feeling
+himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin's extended fist. This gesture
+he took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand,
+found himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and
+the cow-puncher's matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all
+people. Barker picked it up and gave it back. "No, no, no!" he said,
+mirthful over his own inclination to be annoyed; "you can't do that. I'm
+just as much obliged, Lin," he added.
+
+"Just as a loan, Doc--some of it. I'm grass-bellied with spot-cash."
+
+A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp young lady
+was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily for Tennyson's
+expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his discountenanced savings
+back into his clothes. Making haste to leave the book department of this
+shop, they regained a mutual ease, and the Governor became waggish over
+Lin's concern at being too rich. He suggested to him the list of
+delinquent taxpayers and the latest census from which to select indigent
+persons. He had patients, too, whose inveterate pennilessness he could
+swear cheerfully to--"since you want to bolt from your own money," he
+remarked.
+
+"Yes, I'm a green horse," assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; "ain't used to
+the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at 'em."
+
+From his face--that jocular mask--one might have counted him the most
+serene and careless  of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
+voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
+would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering body,
+but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean of old
+days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy ground.
+"I've got it!" he exclaimed; "give your wife something."
+
+The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
+with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
+and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
+"If you'll give me her name and address," said he, with the future
+entirely in his mind.
+
+"Why, Laramie!" and the Governor feigned surprise.
+
+"Say, Doc," said Lin, uneasily, "none of 'em ain't married me since I saw
+yu' last."
+
+"Then she hasn't written from Laramie," said the hilarious Governor, and
+Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. "Gee whiz!"
+went on Barker, "I'll never forget you and Lusk that day!"
+
+But the mask fell now. "You're talking of his wife, not mine," said the
+cow-puncher very quietly, and smiling no more; "and, Doc, I'm going to
+say a word to yu', for I know yu've always been my good friend. I'll
+never forget that day myself--but I don't want to be reminded of it."
+
+"I'm a fool, Lin," said the Governor, generous instantly. "I never
+supposed--"
+
+"I know yu' didn't, Doc. It ain't you that's the fool. And in a way--in a
+way--" Lin's speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker, seeing
+how wistful his face had turned, waited. "But I ain't quite the same fool
+I was before that happened to me," the cow-puncher resumed, "though maybe
+my actions don't show to be wiser. I know that there was better luck than
+a man like me had any call to look for."
+
+The sobered Barker said, simply, "Yes, Lin." He was put to thinking by
+these words from the unsuspected inner man.
+
+Out in the Bow Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick, red
+cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
+knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle and
+took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife to the
+best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were confident
+he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival and beating
+him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the marriage was an
+inadvertence. "He jest bumped into it before he could pull up," they
+explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean's sporting blood,
+had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali. For the new-made
+husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that came upon him he
+tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before, and learned also
+how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink beneath the man in
+baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived innocent until this
+time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so that citizens in
+Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued shrewdly that men
+of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the strain had broken
+his endurance an unexpected first husband, named Lusk, had appeared one
+Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving, and exceedingly drunk. To
+the arms of Lusk she went back in the public street, deserting McLean in
+the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne saw this, and learned how she
+had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if intermittent, years, Cheyenne
+laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too, and went about his business,
+ready to swagger at the necessary moment, and with the necessary kind of
+joke always ready to shield his hurt spirit. And soon, of course, the
+matter grew stale, seldom raked up in the Bow Leg country where Lin had
+been at work; so lately he had begun to remember other things beside the
+smouldering humiliation.
+
+"Is she with him?" he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
+told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the
+moral that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and
+revealed the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he
+quieted the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote about
+the house of Lusk, but instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on Mondays,
+Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days, thus getting
+one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined his opinion of the
+family by recently skipping to parts unknown, Barker detailed these
+incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs. Lusk addicted
+to opium.
+
+"I don't guess I'll leave my card on 'em," said McLean, grimly, "if I
+strike Laramie."
+
+"You don't mind my saying I think you're well out of that scrape?" Barker
+ventured.
+
+"Shucks, no! That's all right, Doc. Only--yu' see now. A man gets tired
+pretending--onced in a while."
+
+Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
+Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
+shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
+hastened toward his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness
+of the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys. He
+had come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and well
+disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing with
+each other and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of hurry to
+escape from that loneliness where his human promptings had been lodged
+with him useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale, and he
+with his pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of Shorty, and
+Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit a town with, he stepped
+out with a brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and a foretaste
+of a good time coming that he put on his town clothes, after shaving and
+admiring himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate away and drank
+with a robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even himself at first.
+But the sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for all he could do. As
+he groped for the contentment which he saw around him he began to receive
+the jokes with counterfeit mirth. Memories took the place of
+anticipation, and through their moody shiftings he began to feel a
+distaste for the company of his friends and a shrinking from their lively
+voices. He blamed them for this at once. He was surprised to think he had
+never recognized before how light a weight was Shorty; and here was
+Chalkeye, who knew better, talking religion after two glasses. Presently
+this attack of noticing his friends' shortcomings mastered him, and his
+mind, according to its wont, changed at a stroke. "I'm celebrating no
+Christmas with this crowd," said the inner man; and when they had next
+remembered Lin McLean in their hilarity he was gone.
+
+Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to meet
+a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station,
+buying a ticket for Denver.
+
+"Denver!" exclaimed the amazed Governor.
+
+"That's what I said," stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
+
+"Gee whiz!" went his Excellency. "What are you going to do there?"
+
+"Get good and drunk."
+
+"Can't you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?"
+
+"I'm drinking champagne this trip."
+
+The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
+moved off. Barker had walked out too in his surprise, and as he stared
+after the last car, Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
+inside the door.
+
+"And he says he's got maturity," Barker muttered. "I've known him since
+seventy-nine, and he's kept about eight years old right along." The
+Governor was cross, and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
+Lin's marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
+fool. "Yes, about eight. Or six," said his Excellency, justifying himself
+by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen, supreme in
+length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling for an early
+mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished, he had mended
+the boy's badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and Lin's utter
+health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon overflowed with
+the pride of science, and over the bandages would explain the human body
+technically to his wild-eyed and flattered patient. Thus young Lin heard
+all about tibia, and comminuted, and other glorious new words, and when
+sleepless would rehearse them. Then, with the bone so nearly knit that
+the patient might leave the ward on crutches to sit each morning in
+Barker's room as a privilege, the disobedient child of twenty-one had
+slipped out of the hospital and hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where
+whiskey and variety waited for a languishing convalescent. Here he grew
+gay, and was soon carried back with the leg refractured. Yet Barker's
+surgical rage was disarmed, the patient was so forlorn over his doctor's
+professional chagrin.
+
+"I suppose it ain't no better this morning, Doc?" he had said, humbly,
+after a new week of bed and weights.
+
+"Your right leg's going to be shorter. That's all."
+
+"Oh, gosh! I've been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain't I a
+son-of-a-gun?"
+
+You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time's due course he had
+walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all
+and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had
+missed the child's conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected
+thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
+
+"He'll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent," said
+Barker. "Then he'll come back on a freight and begin over again."
+
+At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
+omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
+first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked
+the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin
+took Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw a
+saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
+should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher over
+there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly. In
+such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to enjoy
+without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he looked
+along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric lights,
+and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried "Shine?
+Shine?" at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the right to
+get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of stopping at
+all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a few yards, and
+it was across the street. This one being attained and appreciated, he
+found that he must cross back again or skip number four. At this rate he
+would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre, and he stopped to
+consider. It was a German place he had just quitted, and a huge light
+poured out on him from its window, which the proprietor's father-land
+sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone among a well-set pine
+forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots and reached upward to
+Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held in his right hand
+forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a string of sausages
+that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American back to this, the
+cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he had not changed
+since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered carefully the Hot
+Scotch question, and which side of the road to take and stick to, while
+the little bootblacks found him once more and cried, "Shine? Shine?"
+monotonous as snow-birds. He settled to stay over here with the
+south-side Scotches, and the little one-note song reaching his attention,
+he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly sprang away.
+
+"Dare you to touch him!" piped a snow-bird, dangerously. They were in
+short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
+
+"Don't hit me," said Mr. McLean "I'm innocent."
+
+"Well, you leave him be," said one.
+
+"What's he layin' to kick you for, Billy? 'Tain't yer pop, is it?"
+
+"New!" said Billy, in scorn. "Father never kicked me. Don't know who he
+is."
+
+"He's a special!" shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. "He's got a
+badge, and he's goin' to arrest yer."
+
+Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
+scattered with practiced strategy; but Billy stood his ground. "Dare you
+to arrest me!" said he.
+
+"What'll you give me not to?" inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
+pockets, arms akimbo.
+
+"Nothing; I've done nothing," announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
+last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and
+he, too, sped into the middle of the street.
+
+"What's he claim you lifted?" inquired the leader, with eagerness. "Tell
+him you haven't been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!" they
+screamed to the special officer.
+
+"Say," said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, "you're poor judges of
+a badge, you fellows."
+
+His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
+
+Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
+window. "Why, if any policeman was caught wearin' this here," said he,
+following his sprightly invention, "he'd get arrested himself."
+
+This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
+the last.
+
+"If it's your idea," pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
+cautious steps nearer the curb, "that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
+red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug--why, I'll
+get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar."
+
+The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and clattering
+their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
+
+"Easy!" wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
+fascinated. "Not having three feet," said the cow-puncher, always grave
+and slow, "I can only give two this here job."
+
+"He's got a big pistol and a belt!" exulted the leader, who had
+precociously felt beneath Lin's coat.
+
+"You're a smart boy," said Lin, considering him, "and yu' find a man out
+right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they fix
+the boots--and a dollar goes to the quickest through."
+
+Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a boot,
+with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr. McLean.
+
+"That's a Colt .45 you've got," ventured he.
+
+"Right again. Some day, maybe, you'll be wearing one of your own, if the
+angels don't pull yu' before you're ripe."
+
+"I'm through!" sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
+
+Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
+bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
+arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
+
+"Will you kindly referee," said he, forgivingly, to the leader, "and
+decide which of them smears is the awfulest?"
+
+But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
+
+"Well, that saves me money," said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket. "I
+guess you've both won." He handed each of them a dollar. "Now," he
+continued, "I just dassent show these boots uptown; so this time it's a
+dollar for the best shine."
+
+The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played
+his mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding leaned
+against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
+in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out
+his beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
+
+Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher
+perceived, and Billy no seasoned expert. "See here," said Lin, stooping,
+"I'll show yu' how it's done. He's playin' that toon cross-eyed enough to
+steer anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft, and work with a
+dry brush."
+
+"Lemme," said Billy. "I've got to learn." So he finished the boot his own
+way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this event
+was also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both parties.
+So here was their work done, and more money in their pockets than from
+all the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and Billy did not
+wish for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune as soon as
+might be. Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window, drawn by
+curiosity near this new kind of man whose voice held them and whose
+remarks dropped them into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted leader
+had been unable to go away and nurse his pride alone.
+
+"Is that a secret society?" inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
+badge.
+
+Mr. McLean nodded. "Turruble," said he.
+
+"You're a Wells & Fargo detective," asserted the leader.
+
+"Play your harp," said Lin.
+
+"Are you a--a desperaydo?" whispered Towhead.
+
+"Oh, my!" observed Mr. McLean, sadly; "what has our Jack been readin'?"
+
+"He's a cattle-man!" cried Billy. "I seen his heels."
+
+"That's you!" said the discovered puncher, with approval. "You'll do. But
+I bet you can't tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to do
+this night."
+
+At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
+
+"We--are--sworn--don't yu' jump, now, and give me away--sworn--to--blow
+off three bootblacks to a dinner."
+
+"Ah, pshaw!" They backed away, bristling with distrust.
+
+"That's the oath, fellows. Yu' may as well make your minds up--for I have
+it to do!"
+
+"Dare you to! Ah!"
+
+"And after dinner it's the Opera-house, to see 'The Children of Captain
+Cant'!"
+
+They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
+
+"I can't waste my time on such smart boys," said Mr. McLean, rising
+lazily to his full height from the window-sill. "I am goin' somewhere to
+find boys that ain't so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey."
+
+He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
+they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes, and
+followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
+window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
+stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher seemed to be smiling more
+broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
+
+On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few
+remarks. He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that
+would have led to conversation under almost any circumstances save these;
+but the minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole state of
+things for them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr. McLean in
+silence, at a wary interval, and with their mouths, during most of the
+journey, open. The badge, the pistol, their patron's talk, and the
+unusual dollars, wakened wide their bent for the unexpected, their street
+affinity for the spur of the moment; they believed slimly in the turkey
+part of it, but what this man might do next, to be there when he did it,
+and not to be trapped, kept their wits jumping deliciously; so when they
+saw him stop, they stopped instantly too, ten feet out of reach. This was
+Denver's most civilized restaurant--that one which Mr. McLean had
+remembered, with foreign dishes and private rooms, where he had promised
+himself, among other things, champagne. Mr. McLean had never been inside
+it, but heard a tale from a friend; and now he caught a sudden sight of
+people among geraniums, with plumes and white shirt-fronts, very elegant.
+It must have been several minutes that he stood contemplating the
+entrance and the luxurious couples who went in.
+
+"Plumb French!" he observed at length; and then, "Shucks!" in a key less
+confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly. "They're
+eatin' patty de parley-voo in there," he muttered, and the three
+bootblacks came beside him. "Say, fellows," said Lin, confidingly, "I
+wasn't raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu' say! I'm
+after a place where yu' can mention oyster stoo without givin' anybody a
+fit. What do yu' say, boys?"
+
+That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
+
+"Ah, you come along with us--we'll take yer! You don't want to go in
+there. We'll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won't lose yer."
+So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they clustered
+about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started
+obediently, and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
+
+"Christmas is comin' now, sure," said Lin, grinning to himself. "It ain't
+exactly what I figured on." It was the first time he had laughed since
+Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with the new
+warmth in his heart.
+
+Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
+suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they went
+along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
+Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and then
+stole at him a doubtful look.
+
+The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
+presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
+precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and the
+oyster stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and several
+choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient; and to
+witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket and its
+wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the guests a
+transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as frankly
+ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all grew
+fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr. McLean
+stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
+
+"Have a cigarette?" said the leader, over his pie.
+
+"Thank yu'," said Lin. "I won't smoke, if yu'll excuse me." He had
+devised a wholesome meal, with water to drink.
+
+"Chewin's no good at meals," continued the boy. "Don't you use tobaccer?"
+
+"Onced in a while."
+
+The leader spat brightly. "He ain't learned yet," said he, slanting his
+elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. "But beer, now--I
+never seen anything in it." He and Towhead soon left Billy and his callow
+profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that silenced him,
+and set him listening with all his admiring young might. Nor did Mr.
+McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this knowledge, which
+seemed about as much as he knew himself.
+
+"I'll be goshed," he thought, "if I'd caught on to half that when I was
+streakin' around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now." But now
+the Country Mouse perceived Billy's eager and attentive apprenticeship.
+"Hello, boys!" he said, "that theatre's got a big start on us."
+
+They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre, and other
+topics left their impatient minds, while the Country Mouse paid the bill
+and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. "This man here will look out
+for your blackin' and truck, and let yu' have it in the morning."
+
+They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the
+highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
+icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
+effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced so
+helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain Grant
+had been tracking their father all over the equator and other scenic
+spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. The Captain's
+youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a sudden
+motion, loudly shouted, "Sister, the ice is closing in!" and she replied,
+chastely, "Then let us pray." It was a superb tableau: the ice split, and
+the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith. The act-drop fell, and
+male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out to the rum-shop.
+
+Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
+applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
+Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship's getting farther
+south in the next act. Until lately Billy's doubt of the cow-puncher had
+lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out in
+him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
+unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
+
+"Don't you think this is splendid?" said he.
+
+"Splendid," Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
+
+"Don't you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?"
+
+"Humming," said Lin.
+
+"Don't you guess it's just girls, though, that do that?"
+
+"What, young fellow?"
+
+"Why, all that prayer-saying an' stuff."
+
+"I guess it must be."
+
+"She said to do it when the ice scared her, an' of course a man had to do
+what she wanted him."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Well, do you believe they'd 'a' done it if she hadn't been on that boat,
+and clung around an' cried an' everything, an' made her friends feel
+bad?"
+
+"I hardly expect they would," replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
+mindful of Billy, "except there wasn't nothin' else they could think of,"
+he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
+
+"Why, that chunk of ice weren't so awful big anyhow. I'd 'a' shoved her
+off with a pole. Wouldn't you?"
+
+"Butted her like a ram," exclaimed Mr. McLean.
+
+"Well, I don't say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn't
+a-going to, an' he--I think he is a flubdub anyway."
+
+"I'll bet he is!" said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
+guardian.
+
+"I told him straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his knees.
+An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them putting
+up any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an' I says,
+'Dare you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing, an' I'd
+not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you pray
+much?"
+
+"No," replied Lin, uneasily.
+
+"There! I told him a man didn't, an' he said then a man went to hell.
+'You lie; father ain't going to hell,' I says, and you'd ought to heard
+the first class laugh right out loud, girls an' boys. An' he was that
+mad! But I didn't care. I came here with fifty cents."
+
+"Yu' must have felt like a millionaire."
+
+"Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an' sold 'em, an' got more an'
+saved, ant got my box an' blacking outfit. I weren't going to be licked
+by her just because she felt like it, an' she feeling like it most any
+time. Lemme see your pistol."
+
+"You wait," said Lin. "After this show is through I'll put it on you."
+
+"Will you, honest? Belt an' everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?"
+
+"Lord! lots."
+
+"Honest? Silver-tips?"
+
+"Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cub onced."
+
+"O-h! I never shot a bear."
+
+"You'd ought to try it."
+
+"I'm a-going to. I'm a-going to camp out in the mountains. I'd like to
+see you when you camp. I'd like to camp with you. Mightn't I some time?"
+Billy had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
+
+"You bet!" said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
+it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy. As
+with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he met--
+the few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite play
+for him, and his hand went to the boy's shoulder.
+
+"Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
+gets awful drunk, too. I've quit Laramie for good."
+
+Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. "Laramie!" said he, almost
+shouting it. "Yu'--yu'--is your name Lusk?"
+
+But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. "You're not going to take me
+home?" he piteously wailed.
+
+"Heaven and heavens!" murmured Lin McLean. "So you're her kid!"
+
+He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
+length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by a
+brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
+aisle, like the cornered city mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
+little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
+in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the
+boy, and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
+dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
+that should restore the perished confidence. "Why did yu' lead him off?"
+he asked himself unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know;
+but as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and
+more sorrowful. "I just hate him to think that of me," he reflected. The
+curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they should
+all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain Grant grew
+hotter and hotter upon their father's geographic trail, Lin sat saying to
+himself a number of contradictions. "He's nothing to me; what's any of
+them to me?" Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he restated the facts of
+the past. "Why, she'd deserted him and Lusk before she'd ever laid eyes
+on me. I needn't to bother myself. He wasn't never even my step-kid." The
+past, however, brought no guidance. "Lord, what's the thing to do about
+this? If I had any home-- This is a stinkin' world in some respects,"
+said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the chair beneath which
+the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband. They took it for emotion
+over the sad fortune of Captain Grant, and their backs shook. Presently
+each turned, and saw the singular man with untamed, wide-open eyes
+glowering at the stage, and both backs shook again.
+
+Once more his hand was laid on Billy. "Say!" The boy glanced at him, and
+quickly away.
+
+"Look at me, and listen."
+
+Billy swervingly obeyed.
+
+"I ain't after yu', and never was. This here's your business, not mine.
+Are yu' listenin' good?"
+
+The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: "You've got no call to
+believe what I say to yu'--yu've been lied to, I guess, pretty often. So
+I'll not stop yu' runnin' and hidin', and I'll never give it away I saw
+yu', but yu' keep doin' what yu' please. I'll just go now. I've saw all I
+want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If yu' happen
+to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu' come around to
+Smith's Palace--that's the boss hotel here, ain't it?--and if yu' don't
+come too late I'll not be gone to bed. But this time of night I'm liable
+to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good to
+yourself. I've appreciated your company."
+
+Mr. McLean entered Smith's Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds in
+it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. "It's a lost boy--
+a runaway," he told the clerk. "He'll not be extra clean, I expect, if
+he does come. Maybe he'll give me the slip, and I'll have a job cut out
+to-morrow. I'll thank yu' to put my money in your safe."
+
+The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
+walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
+minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
+
+"Hello!" said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
+Pike's Peak.
+
+Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention, came
+stepping along. "I'm not a-going back to Laramie," he stated, warningly.
+
+"I wouldn't," said Lin. "It ain't half the town Denver is. Well,
+good-night. Sorry yu' couldn't call sooner--I'm dead sleepy."
+
+"O-h!" Billy stood blank. "I wish I'd shook the darned old show. Say,
+lemme black your boots in the morning?"
+
+"Not sure my train don't go too early."
+
+"I'm up! I'm up! I get around to all of 'em."
+
+"Where do yu' sleep?"
+
+"Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can't you put that on me
+to-night?"
+
+"Goin' up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn't let you go up-stairs."
+
+But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to
+hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt round
+his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders outside the
+accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
+
+"Did it ever kill a man?" asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
+
+"No. It ain't never had to do that, but I expect maybe it's stopped some
+killin' me."
+
+"Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
+they're bully. There's the finest one you ever seen." He brought out the
+relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. "I foun' it myself,
+camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
+but nobody'd seen it till I came along. Ain't it fine?"
+
+Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
+
+"Father an' me found a lot, an' they made mother mad laying around, an'
+she throwed 'em out. She takes stuff from Kelley's."
+
+"Who's Kelley?"
+
+"He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That's how
+she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an' I ran then.
+An' I knowed well enough she'd lick me when she got through her spell--
+an' father can't stop her, an' I--ah, I was sick of it! She's lamed me up
+twice beating me--an' Perkins wanting me to say 'God bless my mother!'
+a-getting up and a-going to bed--he's a flubdub! An' so I cleared out.
+But I'd just as leaves said for God to bless father--an' you. I'll do it
+now if you say it's any sense."
+
+Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. "Don't yu' do it now," said he.
+
+"You wouldn't like mother," Billy continued. "You can keep that." He came
+to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside him. "Do
+you like birds' eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five kinds--sage-hen,
+an' blue grouse, an' willow-grouse, an' lots more kinds harder--but I
+couldn't bring all them from Laramie. I brought the magpie's, though. D'
+you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you stay to-morrow an' I'll show you
+that en' some other things I got the engine-man lets me keep there, for
+there's boys that would steal an egg. An' I could take you where we could
+fire that pistol. Bet you don't know what that is!"
+
+He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were
+things that rattled.
+
+Mr. McLean gave it up.
+
+"That's kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with
+the engine-man."
+
+Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
+first feeling had been to prevent the boy's parting with his treasures,
+but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience
+made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
+his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
+the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
+dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
+inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
+hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
+in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man
+held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion that
+Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
+suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
+was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The arms
+and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
+conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
+frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
+breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the long,
+curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the door
+of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and kissed
+Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a hangdog
+stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the sound sleep
+of health.
+
+He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering with
+his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
+slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
+he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
+filled with the bells and the sun of the winter's day. "Where have I
+struck now?" he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
+mind, he raised himself on his arm.
+
+There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
+him.
+
+"You're awful late," said Responsibility. "But I weren't a-going without
+telling you good-bye."
+
+"Go?" exclaimed Lin. "Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
+breakfast alone?" The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
+Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
+than he could do!
+
+"I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay--why, you said
+you was a-going by the early train!"
+
+"But the durned thing's got away on me," said Lin, smiling sweetly from
+the bed.
+
+"If I hadn't a-promised them--"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with them."
+
+"Shucks!"
+
+"We're a-going to have fun to-day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
+he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just
+as leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
+here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?"
+
+"Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?" inquired the artful McLean.
+"That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes."
+
+"Twenty minutes! If they'd wait--"
+
+"See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd ought
+to waked, yu' see, but I slep' and slep', and kep' yu' from meetin' your
+engagements, yu' see--for you couldn't go, of course. A man couldn't
+treat a man that way now, could he?"
+
+"Course he couldn't," said Billy, brightening.
+
+"And they wouldn't wait, yu' see. They wouldn't fool away Christmas, that
+only comes onced a year, kickin' their heels and sayin' 'Where's Billy?'
+They'd say, 'Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he'll explain
+to us at his leesyure.' And they'd skip with the cigars."
+
+The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy
+with a convincing eye.
+
+"That's so," said Billy.
+
+"And where would yu' be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out of
+Christmas, and left both ways, no tobaccer and no flapjacks. Now, Bill,
+what do yu' say to us putting up a Christmas deal together? Just you and
+me?"
+
+"I'd like that," said Billy. "Is it all day?"
+
+"I was thinkin' of all day," said Lin. "I'll not make yu' do anything
+yu'd rather not."
+
+"Ah, they can smoke without me," said Billy, with sudden acrimony. "I'll
+see 'em to-morro'."
+
+"That's you!" cried Mr. McLean. "Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell them
+to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'."
+
+The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
+tying his scarf with great care. "Wished I'd a clean shirt," said he.
+"But I don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good move."
+He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was particular to
+store them in his safest pocket. "I ain't sure whether you're crazy or
+not," said he to the man in the looking-glass. "I ain't never been sure."
+And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.
+
+He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
+tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
+or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
+breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
+Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
+pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
+the bill of fare.
+
+"I'd like to see you often," said he. "I'll come and see you if you don't
+live too far."
+
+"That's the trouble," said the cow-puncher. "I do. Awful far." He stared
+out of the window.
+
+"Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
+write?" "What's that? Can I write? Oh yes."
+
+"I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney,
+Nebraska, an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake--that's the finest town except
+Denver."
+
+Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to, yet
+goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable
+signs of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
+interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
+they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
+the bill paid.
+
+The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
+stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from
+their peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over
+the city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
+buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
+presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells broke
+out against the jocund silence of the morning.
+
+"Don't you like music?" inquired Billy.
+
+"Yes," said Lin.
+
+Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting, orderly
+yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of Christmas
+came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day, possessor of
+his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort of friendly
+challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
+
+"Don't you think we could go in here?" Billy asked. A church door was
+open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. "They've good
+music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been
+in lots of times."
+
+They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
+to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
+unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep in
+listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent imitation
+of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain especially
+reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time "Shout the
+glad tidings, exultingly sing," pealed forth and ceased, both the
+delighted faces fell.
+
+"Don't you wish there was more?" Billy whispered.
+
+"Wish there was a hundred verses," answered Lin.
+
+But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between them
+they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin's eyes
+roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their evergreen, the
+flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold. "'Peace, good-
+will towards men,'" he read. "That's so. Peace and good-will. Yes, that's
+so. I expect they got that somewheres in the Bible. It's awful good, and
+you'd never think of it yourself."
+
+There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. "This is
+the hymn we have now," she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
+took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the book
+together, dutifully reading the words:
+
+   "It came upon the midnight clear,
+        That glorious song of old,
+    From angels bending near the earth
+        To touch their harps of gold;
+    Peace on the earth--"
+
+This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it, until
+he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the concluding
+ones:
+
+   "And the whole world sent back the song
+    Which now the angels sing."
+
+The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
+second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned his
+face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has reasons
+which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but when the
+service was over and he came out, he repeated again, "'Peace and
+good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if he'll
+preach on them words I'll be there."
+
+"Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?" asked Billy.
+
+"Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?"
+
+"No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?"
+
+"The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses. Why,
+we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among the
+foothills."
+
+To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
+open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
+was walked off his young heels--a truth he learned complete in one horrid
+moment, and battled to conceal.
+
+"Lame!" he echoed, angrily. "I ain't."
+
+"Shucks!" said Lin, after the next ten steps. "You are, and both feet."
+
+"Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them."
+
+Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden. "I'm
+played out myself," he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
+lugubriously at Billy on a bed. "And I ain't fit to have charge of a
+hog." He came and put his hand on the boy's head.
+
+"I'm not sick," said the cripple. "I tell you I'm bully. You wait an' see
+me eat dinner."
+
+But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
+knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!
+
+There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription and
+most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of vigil,
+while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed, better
+and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
+
+"I couldn't work quick to-day," he said. "But I guess one day won't lose
+me my trade."
+
+"How d' yu' mean?" asked Lin.
+
+"Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has
+theirs, an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher
+an' lots, an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for
+nothing. I wished you lived in Denver."
+
+"Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
+any of the outfit."
+
+"Why, I'm doing first-rate," said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
+which Mr. McLean now burst. "An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
+at any other job."
+
+"I want to see that engine-man," muttered Lin. "I don't like your smokin'
+friend."
+
+"Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?"
+
+"Smart's nothin'," observed Mr. McLean.
+
+"Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot," pursued Billy, engagingly.
+
+"I'll bet he has!" growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
+aback at his language.
+
+It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
+grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
+talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
+think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched and
+shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through a scene
+in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and forgiveness,
+and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. "Shucks!" said he. "The
+kid would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him there,
+anyway."
+
+Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
+corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular man,
+with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that week
+noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little boy
+walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed as
+happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a word,
+and his face was serious.
+
+Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
+horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
+
+"Hello!" said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. "Have a
+good drunk?"
+
+"Changed my mind," said Lin, grinning. "Proves I've got one. Struck
+Christmas all right, though."
+
+"Who's your friend?" inquired his Excellency.
+
+"This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
+to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at Sunk
+Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow."
+
+The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
+plain.
+
+"Sufferin Moses!" remarked his Excellency.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEPAR'S VIGILANTE
+
+We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging
+through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue
+coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a
+little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two
+hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across
+the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating,
+imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for
+its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's
+stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other
+buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks
+arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the
+sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant
+rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
+
+"They've caved!" he shouted.
+
+"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.
+
+"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
+"They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must
+know all about it.
+
+"Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least.
+
+"Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
+passed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."
+
+He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
+more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
+waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
+haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
+so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion
+of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed
+employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the
+railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I
+dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the
+station, and, at once remarking, "They're going to leave us alone,"
+sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where some
+cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail, and
+here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had got a
+letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate
+the jests of these rollicking people. "Read it!" they said to me; and I
+did read the private document, and learned that the railroad was going to
+waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ's
+good feeling. "Nothing more," the letter ran, "will be done about the
+initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall pass over our
+wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will prove our
+genuine desire to benefit that section.
+
+"'Initial outrage,'" quoted one of the agent' large playmates. "Ain't
+they furgivin'?"
+
+"Well," said I, "you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
+deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
+cow-catcher!"
+
+The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
+
+"We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
+label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
+sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes," he drawled judicially, "I'd be mad at
+that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why,
+your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant." He took
+the paper from me, and read, sardonically: "'Subsequent vandalisms ...
+wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the
+cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad
+'Policy of friendship ... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!" And, shaking
+his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of
+the agent. "Tubercle," said he (this was their name for the agent, who
+had told all of us about his lungs), "it ain't your fault we saw their
+fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't
+bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late
+over this joke."
+
+Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit
+the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to
+frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its
+opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think
+of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box
+painted "Hotel Brunswick"--"hotel" in small italics and "Brunswick"
+in enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
+
+Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
+and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
+challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the line
+in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well
+known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant
+young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by
+her to see about supper and lodging.
+
+At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
+beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
+myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might
+ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals
+I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted and
+whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several empties stood
+idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these freight-cars was
+timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by three o'clock
+would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking through my
+blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But with clean
+straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until five or six.
+I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door, where the table
+was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell of the butter
+that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend the
+remaining minutes in the air.
+
+"I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightened
+him!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
+"Why," she explained, "I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side
+are you going to butter your bread this evening?"
+
+"You had smelt it?" said I, still cloudy with surprise. "Yes.
+Unquestionably. Very rancid." She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
+fellowship in her tone, said, "I was going to warn you--" when suddenly,
+down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. "Oh, dear!" she
+cried, starting up. "There's trouble."
+
+"Not trouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be in
+earnest. And you would be safe here."
+
+"Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we are
+respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
+yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home."
+The words "Louisville and Nashville" spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
+
+"Unescorted all that way!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Isn't it awful?" said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
+the pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
+suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And she
+eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
+
+"Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."
+
+"Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
+English!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
+to herself, reprovingly, "If I'm not acting rude!"
+
+"Oh!" said I, rather familiarly.
+
+"It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so free
+with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and everything--
+I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking to--to folks
+around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose before her,
+and her eyes grew distant.
+
+I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall country girl
+had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not "folks around," she
+had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
+there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
+comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
+dark as to them.
+
+"Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as far as
+twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
+scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow."
+
+"You've got me all wrong," said I. "I'm not English; I'm not New York. I
+am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
+line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you
+say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"
+
+"Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
+most Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
+were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
+since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you,
+you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?"
+
+"I'd travel my money's length to meet her!" said I.
+
+A wave of pain crossed her face. "Nate didn't know," she said then,
+lightly. "You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
+writing."
+
+Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
+Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
+forgiven.
+
+"I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage," continued the girl.
+
+"Then I'll have your company on a weary road," said I; for my journey was
+now to that part of the cattle country.
+
+"To Buffalo?" she said, quickly. "Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is
+Nate Buckner." She paused. "Then you're not acquainted with him?"
+
+"I may have seen him," I answered, slowly. "But faces and names out here
+come and go."
+
+I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
+waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
+border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been
+sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of
+the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and
+daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart;
+but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely
+years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell
+the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the
+stage went soon after supper.
+
+"Now isn't that a bother?" said she, when I answered that it did not
+start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. "Never
+mind," she continued, briskly; "I'm used to things. I'll just sit up
+somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure
+all that shooting's only jollification?"
+
+"Certain," I said. "But I'll go and see."
+
+"They always will have their fun," said she. "But I hate to have a poor
+boy get hurt--even him deserving it!"
+
+"They use pistols instead of fire-crackers," said I. "But you must never
+sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do."
+
+"Why, you're real kind!" she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
+wondering what I ought to do.
+
+Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a sort
+of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of its
+name.
+
+Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail
+after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly
+during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point
+these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp
+Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway
+man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless;
+and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike
+result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large
+almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank
+and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees before it composed
+the north side. South of the track were no trees. There was one long
+siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug
+tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where you might get your
+horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed
+hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the little station--some seven
+shanties all told. Between them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains
+engulfed them, and through their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad, to
+which they hung like beads on a great string from horizon to horizon. A
+great east-and-west string, one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one
+in the crimson sun at night. Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports
+where the world went on out of sight and hearing. This lone steel thread
+had been stretched across the continent because it was the day of haste
+and hope, when dollars seemed many and hard times were few; and from the
+Yellowstone to the Rio Grande similar threads were stretching, and little
+Separs by dispersed hundreds hung on them, as it were in space eternal.
+Can you wonder that vigorous young men with pistols should, when they
+came to such a place, shoot them off to let loose their unbounded joy of
+living?
+
+And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of the
+agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin
+with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to
+telegraph for some additional cars.
+
+"I'm dead on to you!" squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight
+of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought it
+was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the
+water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind
+the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some
+fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to
+an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and
+comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
+habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
+inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
+reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
+Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
+in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
+wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?
+
+They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about
+the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
+round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
+out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
+should be so tactless.
+
+"If we don't get him used to us," observed the Virginian, "he and his
+pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man."
+
+Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it. The
+news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater, and
+playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols
+round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs improved, and he
+came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand. But the
+company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated,
+which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of
+authority began to invest Separ. Now what should authority do upon these
+free plains, this wilderness of do-as-you-please, where mere breathing
+the air was like inebriation? The large, headlong children who swept in
+from the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm
+until they found themselves resisted. Then presently happened that affair
+of the cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a
+mail-car they had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and
+petticoats, met his death accidentally, at which they were sincerely
+sorry for about five minutes. They valued their own lives as little, and
+that lifts them forever from baseness at least. So the company,
+concluding such things must be endured for a while yet, wrote their
+letter, and you have seen how wrong the letter went. All it would do
+would be from now on to fasten upon Separ its code of recklessness; to
+make shooting the water-tank (for example) part of a gentleman's
+deportment when he showed himself in town.
+
+It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would be
+early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner. To
+arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made
+the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the
+corrals.
+
+A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here was Billy
+Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick,
+helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
+
+"Thought you were at school," said I.
+
+"Ah, school's quit," returned Billy, and changed the subject. "Say, Lin's
+hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with the
+outfit." And Billy resumed his specious activity.
+
+Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
+reminded him of politics. "Wall Street," he was explaining to the agent,
+"has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
+along to Chicago. We want--" Here he noticed me and, dragging his gauntlet
+off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
+
+"Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me," I remarked.
+
+"Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted."
+
+"Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean," simpered the agent.
+
+Lin fixed his eye on the man. "And you don't know it now," said he. Then
+he removed his eye. "Let's grub," he added to me. My friend did not walk
+to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. "Billy is
+a good kid," he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds
+in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter
+dwelling with him, heavy and real. "He's dead stuck on being a
+cow-puncher," he presently said.
+
+"Some day--" I began.
+
+"He don't want to wait that long," Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
+"And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
+The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right.
+Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do
+the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,"
+stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I
+know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. "But
+Billy," Lin resumed, "has agreed to school again when it starts up in the
+fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to." Affection crept anew
+over the cow-puncher's face. "He can learn books with the quickest when
+he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to have a
+regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesome
+him seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--but
+shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted. But
+when I found him the little calf could run and notice like everything!"
+
+"I should hate your contract, Lin," said I. "Adopting's a touch-and-go
+business even when a man has a home."
+
+"I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was
+mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got
+him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and then, but
+Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him hunting next
+month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school.
+Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man foreman--and
+he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see."
+
+"He's asking one hard enough," said I, digressing.
+
+"Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--" said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open,
+hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at
+me again, he said: "Don't you get off any more truck about eldest son and
+that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that I care for
+what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'd not mind, but
+maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set on--well--he didn't
+have a good time till he shook that home of his, and I'm going to make
+this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him, if I can. Now you'll
+drop joshing, won't yu'?" His forehead was moist over getting the thing
+said and laying bare so much of his soul.
+
+"And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?" said I.
+
+He laughed shortly. "She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while,
+you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here" (Lin
+laid his hand on my shoulder), "if you can't expect a good time for
+yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason, can't
+yu'?"
+
+I fairly opened my mouth at him.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his hand
+off my shoulder); "I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met last.
+I guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself-- Why, there's
+a girl!"
+
+"That there is!" said I. "And certainly the world owes her a better--"
+
+"She's a fine-looker," interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further
+attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel
+Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered "Supper!" with a
+shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
+
+"Come!" said Lin, "let's hurry!"
+
+But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths
+at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the
+sister's devoted journey.
+
+"Nate Buckner!" he exclaimed. "Him with a decent sister!"
+
+"It's the other way round," said I. "Her with him for a brother!"
+
+"He goes to the penitentiary this week," said Lin. "He had no more cash
+to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his
+sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved
+time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?"
+
+"I've not told her."
+
+"Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know
+better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's not
+right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband
+would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up
+against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her
+gently."
+
+"Death's different," said I.
+
+"Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a
+shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd been
+just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk
+for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick as the
+stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be down
+ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd
+around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that. If you
+don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself." And Mr. McLean
+took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
+
+The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty
+chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier
+that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at
+a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered
+away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted
+no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and
+many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking
+at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came
+and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl
+seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with
+the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a
+disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have
+never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the native animal
+absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest
+he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork.
+Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently
+wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that,
+eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength
+of the butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate,
+the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's eye, now relieved the
+general silence by observing, chattily:
+
+"Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance."
+
+"If it's too rich for you," croaked the enraged proprietor, "use
+axle-dope."
+
+The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve the
+decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But
+sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless
+boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin, to
+me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying, in
+his Texas idiom,
+
+"Have butter."
+
+He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on "butter" cracked an
+octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only
+shake her head at the plate.
+
+Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose for
+none," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most to
+death."
+
+"I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slicker
+rubbed outside than swallered."
+
+At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
+
+"You don't seem to know anything," observed Mr. McLean. "What toy-shop
+did you escape from?"
+
+"Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head in
+from the kitchen.
+
+"Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?" screamed the boy, furiously.
+"Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!"
+And he flounced out with his young boots.
+
+All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
+
+"Who's hiring him?"
+
+"The C. Y. outfit," said another.
+
+"Half-circle L.," a third corrected.
+
+"I seen one like him onced," said the first, taking his hat from beneath
+his chair. "Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!"
+And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also
+silently dispersed.
+
+Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in
+talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now
+smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about
+himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the
+corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to
+the lady.
+
+Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly
+ceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just had to
+have my laugh."
+
+"That's all right, m'm," said he; "don't mention it."
+
+"For that boy, you know--"
+
+"I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him."
+
+"Now, please don't! Why--why--you were every bit as bad!" Miss Buckner
+pealed out, joyously. "It was the two of you. Oh dear!"
+
+Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. "I had no--I didn't go to--"
+
+"Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well,
+and--I know I ought to behave better!"
+
+"No, yu' oughtn't!" said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of
+deprecation, "You'll think us plumb ignorant."
+
+"You know enough to be kind to folks," said she.
+
+"We'd like to."
+
+"It's the only thing makes the world go round!" she declared, with an
+emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she
+caught herself up, and said gayly to me, "And where's that house you were
+going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?"
+
+"I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet," said I.
+
+"Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me."
+
+"We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ."
+
+"Oh, I am no--tenderfoot, don't you call them?" She whipped out her
+pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
+
+This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a
+glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl
+behind it. "My!" he said, at length, almost in a whisper, "she's got the
+drop on me!"
+
+"I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours," said Miss Buckner.
+"But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards." And she
+handed it to him for inspection.
+
+He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. "My!" he
+murmured again. "Why, shucks!" He looked at Miss Buckner with stark
+rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,
+unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said with
+pride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professional drop
+in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun."
+
+"You'd not trade, though," said she, "for all your flattery."
+
+"Will yu' trade?" pounced Lin. "Won't yu'?"
+
+"Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like
+me ever hold that awful .45 Colt steady?"
+
+"She knows the brands, too!" cried Lin, in ecstasy. "See here," he
+remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, "we're losing time
+right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
+lady, and I'll bring her along."
+
+I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
+office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held the
+ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and
+room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the
+sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove
+in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the
+company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his
+room to rights. But we need not have hurried ourselves. Mr. McLean was so
+long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and
+talking with her, while fifty yards away skulked poor Texas, alone. This
+boy's name was, like himself, of the somewhat unexpected order, being
+Manassas Donohoe.
+
+As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and
+on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, "Did he know?"
+
+Lin hesitated.
+
+"You did know!" she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and
+continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, "I reckon you don't
+like to have to tell folks bad news."
+
+It was I that now hesitated.
+
+"Not to a strange girl, anyway!" said she. "Well, now I have good news to
+tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said you knew
+about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those things can't be
+secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know about this world?
+He hadn't learned the first little thing when he left home five years
+ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate's grandmother, he's
+that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize bad companions when
+they came around. See that!" She showed me a paper, taking it out like a
+precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a pardon signed by Governor
+Barker. "And the Governor has let me carry it to Nate myself. He won't
+know a thing about it till I tell him. The Governor was real kind, and we
+will never forget him. I reckon Nate must have a mustache by now?" said
+she to Lin.
+
+"Yes," Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, "he has got a
+mustache all right."
+
+"He'll be glad to see you," said I, for something to say.
+
+"Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?" she asked
+Lin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. It
+was plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which I
+was already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulse to
+tell her about her brother, and I had been found wanting!
+
+So now she listened over again to the hours of stage jolting that "we"
+had before us, and that lay between her and Nate. "We would be four--
+herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy." Was Billy the one at supper? Oh
+no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. "He's a kid I'm taking up the country,"
+Lin explained. "Ain't you most tuckered out?"
+
+"Oh, me!" she confessed, with a laugh and a sigh.
+
+There again! She had put aside my solicitude lightly, but was willing Lin
+should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleep in the
+agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew back into
+the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictness she
+had shown me before.
+
+"Come out!" she cried, laughing. "Indeed, I thank you. But I can't have
+you sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank you ever
+so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--a
+cowboy!" And she glanced at Lin. "They're calling forty-seven," she added
+to the agent.
+
+"That's me," he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. "So you're
+one of us?"
+
+"I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ," said I. "How in the world do you
+know that?"
+
+"I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and go
+right along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear them from
+his room."
+
+"Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?" inquired the proud and smiling
+McLean.
+
+"Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputy
+coming through on a special engine?"
+
+"Please don't say it out loud!" quavered the agent, as the machine
+clicked its news.
+
+"Yu' needn't be scared of a girl," said Lin. "Another sheriff! So they're
+not quit bothering us yet."
+
+However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; a sheriff
+sent to arrest, on a charge of murder, a man named Trampas, said to be at
+the Sand Hill Ranch. That was near Rawhide, two stations beyond, and the
+engine might not stop at Separ, even to water. So here was no molesting
+of Separ's liberties.
+
+"All the same," Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at the
+corrals, "the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and they
+may act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here," he urged to
+the girl. But she would not. "Well, then, we must rustle some other
+private place for you. How's the section-house?"
+
+"Rank," said the agent, "since those Italians used it. The pump engineer
+has been scouring, but he's scared to bunk there yet himself."
+
+"Too bad you couldn't try my plan of a freight-car!" said I.
+
+"An empty?" she cried. "Is there a clean one?"
+
+"You've sure never done that?" Lin burst out.
+
+"So you're scandalized," said she, punishing him instantly. "I reckon it
+does take a decent girl to shock you." And while she stood laughing at
+him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no
+offence. "Why, to be sure you didn't!" said she. "But I do enjoy you real
+thoroughly."
+
+"Well, m'm," protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back to addressing
+her as "ma'am," "we ain't used--"
+
+"Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I have
+never slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I've
+never had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You do
+lots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots of
+things we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meant no
+offense," she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushed
+protector, "because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complaining
+about an empty. That will be rich--if I can have the door shut."
+
+Upon this she went out to view the cars, Mr. McLean hovering behind her
+with a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering "Shucks!"
+while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. With
+our help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, taking
+the lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the door
+back and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: "Her name's Jessamine. She told
+me. Don't yu' like that name?" So I answered him, "Yes, very much,"
+thinking that some larger flower--but still a flower--might have been
+more apt.
+
+"Nobody seems to have slept in these," said she, stepping down; and on
+learning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,
+"What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute if you
+had a Louavull an' Nashvull car," said she. "Twould seem like my old
+Kentucky home!" And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she held the
+lamp up to read the car's lettering. "'D. and R. G.' Oh, that's a way-off
+stranger! I reckon they're all strange." She went along the train with
+her lamp. "Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this is rich! Nate
+will laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That's a little
+nearer my country. What time does the stage start? Porter, please wake
+'C., B. and Q.' at six, sharp," said she to Lin.
+
+From this point of the evening on, I think of our doings--their doings--
+with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them can ever happen
+again, I know; for it's all gone--settled, sobered, and gone. And
+whatever wholesomer prose of good fortune waits in our cup, how I thank
+my luck for this swallow of frontier poetry which I came in time for!
+
+To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made a
+good shake-down--clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agent
+would have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she did
+not resist--what do you suppose?--a looking-glass for next morning! And
+we got a bucket of water and her valise. It was all one to her, she said,
+in what car Lin and I put up; and let it be next door, by all means, if
+it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety better so; and she
+shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began spreading straw and
+blankets for ourselves, when a whistle sounded far and long, and its tone
+rose in pitch as it came.
+
+"I'll get him to run right to the corrals," said the agent, "so the
+sheriff can tell the boys he's not after them."
+
+"That'll convince 'em he is," said Lin. "Stop him here, or let him go
+through."
+
+But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The rails of
+the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the headlight
+grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at the corrals
+chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the coming engine
+heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met and mixed with
+the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approached together like a
+sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars, where I heard Lin
+ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could see the agent
+running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal with as much
+coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very short space for
+wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed suddenly with
+the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the place. The
+horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging against
+their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust coiled up
+thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the glare of
+the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered around it
+where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep breaths, and the
+internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came out in time to see
+Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising shouts. That was
+child's play; and the universal yell now raised by the horsemen was their
+child's play too; but the whole thing could so precipitately reel into
+the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only look when I saw that
+they had somehow recognized the man on the engine for a sheriff. Two had
+sprung from their horses and were making boisterously toward the cab,
+while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor joking, was going to the cab
+from my side, with his pistol drawn, to keep the peace. The engineer sat
+with a neutral hand on the lever, the fireman had run along the top of
+the coal in the tender and descended and crouched somewhere, and the
+sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured eye upon all parties, was just
+beginning to explain his errand, when some rider from the crowd cut him
+short with an invitation to get down and have a drink. At the word of
+ribald endearment by which he named the sheriff, a passing fierceness
+hardened the officer's face, and the new yell they gave was less playful.
+Waiting no more explanations, they swarmed against the locomotive, and
+McLean pulled himself up on the step. The loud talking fell at a stroke
+to let business go on, and in this silence came the noise of a
+sliding-door. At that I looked, and they all looked, and stood harmless,
+like children surprised. For there on the threshold of the freight-car,
+with the interior darkness behind her, and touched by the headlight's
+diverging rays, stood Jessamine Buckner.
+
+"Will you gentlemen do me a favor?" said she. "Strangers, maybe, have no
+right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For I'm
+real sleepy!" She smiled as she brought this out. "I've been four days
+and nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo. You
+see I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want boys
+to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till
+to-morrow night?"
+
+In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among
+them, and that some word was passing through their groups. After the
+brief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their horses,
+while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the sheriff
+and engineer remained as they were.
+
+"Good-night, lady," said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the
+others kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed away
+to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern chaps,
+passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light in front
+of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and there a
+faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing column a
+bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the doorway,
+and then was gone again into the dimness.
+
+The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
+she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine
+moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an
+exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and, with
+all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely as
+the sheriff steamed by.
+
+"I ain't a-going to chase it," said young Billy, struggling.
+
+"I've a mind to cowhide you," said Lin.
+
+But Miss Buckner interposed. "Oh, well," said she, "next time; if he does
+it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that way
+again if he lets you off?" she asked Billy.
+
+"No," said Billy, looking at her with interest. "Father 'd have cowhided
+me anyway, I guess," he added, meditatively.
+
+"Do you call him father?"
+
+"Ah, father's at Laramie," said Billy, with disgust. "He'd not stop for
+your asking. Lin don't bother me much."
+
+"You quit talking and step up there!" ordered his guardian. "Well, m'm, I
+guess yu' can sleep good now in there."
+
+"If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it!
+Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.--"
+
+"I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin."
+
+"I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride
+together. Pleasant dreams!"
+
+She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered
+it, remarking: "I like her. What makes her live in a car?"
+
+But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who
+took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One
+distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left
+our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off,
+when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his
+stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then
+leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in
+expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid
+into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy,
+Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping
+a watch on it. "So I gave him to understand," said Lin, "that I had no
+objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed
+I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for his system."
+After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought
+I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from Lin that the
+boy had not gone until the time came for him to join his outfit at the
+corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should
+find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown, unthanked young
+sentinel. "Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till they get their
+growth," was his single observation.
+
+But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I
+told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note
+that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see
+him upon her return, to thank him.
+
+"Any Jack can walk around all night," said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
+
+"Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't," observed the young lady.
+
+This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when
+she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
+untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at
+the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours
+very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
+
+But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside her
+to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold her.
+
+Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
+further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so
+winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
+overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely
+doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not
+prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.
+Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and
+woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and
+counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to
+herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at
+me and my well-assumed slumber.
+
+And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot
+sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
+
+"I know this road," piped Billy, on the box
+
+"'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a
+left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains."
+
+So I inquired what game he had then shot.
+
+"Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.
+What made Lin marry mother when father was around?"
+
+The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I
+instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
+that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met
+her on Bear Creek.
+
+The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used to
+have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can
+have a lot of husbands?"
+
+"It don't especially depend on the place," remarked the driver to me.
+
+"Because," Billy went on, "Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd
+had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I
+blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss
+Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and
+Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and
+I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert!
+Say, am I Lin's, honest?"
+
+"No, Billy, you're not," I said.
+
+"Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother!
+I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go.
+You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are,
+but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother
+take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever
+does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he
+does," said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, "I'll quit him and
+skip."
+
+"No danger, Bill," said I.
+
+"How would the nice lady inside please you?" inquired the driver.
+
+"Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!" sang out Billy, loud and scornful.
+"She's after her brother. She's all right, though," he added,
+approvingly.
+
+At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty
+manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now spoke
+cheerfully of birds' eggs.
+
+Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills?
+That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as
+to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war!
+How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to
+Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his
+mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoing cynic, "folks with
+lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!" But
+presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully
+lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too," he whispered to
+me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she
+fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused, as twilight
+deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between
+us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't
+make soberness for somebody."
+
+Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had
+quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our
+next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she did not
+hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
+
+Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave
+brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her eyes.
+The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks white and
+her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me that we
+should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold. I think
+she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart understood
+the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow puncher,
+standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully and spoke never
+a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre emotion; but the
+court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and, as plain as if he
+had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be stared at going up
+those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the joy of that reprieve!
+He turned away with me, and after a few silent steps said, "Wasted! all
+wasted!"
+
+"Let us hope--" I began.
+
+"You're not a fool," he broke in, roughly. "You don't hope anything."
+
+"He'll start life elsewhere," said I.
+
+"Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like
+Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and
+tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and
+how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made
+her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it into
+money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have just
+bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!" Lin brought up
+with a comical chuckle. "And she went to work, and he cleared out, and no
+more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given up
+tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her
+long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows he's
+not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts
+for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York, till
+she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had to go as
+far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the money he
+stole." We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone into the quick
+little river. "She's awful strict in some ways. Thought Buffalo must be a
+wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday. Now if that was all
+Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is mostly sin. But her heart
+is a shield for Nate."
+
+"Her face is as beautiful as her actions," he added.
+
+"Well," said I, "and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?"
+
+He whirled round and took both my shoulders. "Come walking!" he urged. "I
+must talk some." So we followed the stream out of town towards the
+mountains. "I came awful near asking her in the stage," said he.
+
+"Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!"
+
+"Time can't increase my feelings."
+
+"Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?"
+
+"Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do
+with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can be
+so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard. And
+everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending to speak
+of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my
+fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better than
+Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved."
+
+"Then I'd like to ask--" I cried out.
+
+"Ask away!" he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.
+
+"When you--" but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of course,
+not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his substance,
+but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not married
+once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped, for to
+trench here was not for me or any one.
+
+And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.
+
+"No," he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, "don't you ask about
+the things you're meaning." Then his face grew radiant and rather stern.
+"Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones
+can't ever be bygones? But if you," he said, "never come to look away up
+to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you
+did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!"
+
+When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the
+blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking
+vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with
+since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is not
+true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all plants
+need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen misery
+deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the saddest sight
+in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of
+happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been
+needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have been much
+too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and this care
+of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. "Lin," said I, "I will
+drink your health and luck."
+
+"I'm healthy enough," said he; and we came back to the main street and
+into the main saloon.
+
+"How d'ye, boys?" said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. "It's on me
+to-day," he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was a
+little drunk. "I'm setting 'em up," he continued. "Why? Why, because"--he
+looked around for appreciation--"because it's not every son-of-a-gun in
+Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important, I want you to
+understand," he pursued to the cold bystanders. "They'll have a picture
+of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They
+can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to
+break a colt," he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness
+of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the
+subject blurred in his mind. "You're not drinking, Lin," said he.
+
+"No," said McLean, "I'm not."
+
+"Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me."
+
+"Yu' never gave water the chance," retorted the cow-puncher, and we left
+the place without my having drunk his health.
+
+It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,
+with the jail door scarce closed behind him. "Folks are not going to like
+that," said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel. Yet
+the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's
+company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she
+told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must
+get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting
+for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle their
+young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs.
+Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working. All this
+she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first
+day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin
+offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at
+retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made
+excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, shaven clean,
+with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner to Jessamine
+were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean, so that I
+observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.
+
+"Oh, no jealousy!" said he. "But he comes in and kisses her, and he
+kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such
+oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I
+expect she must have some of her savings left."
+
+It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as
+our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if
+her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to
+Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her;
+and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that
+dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed
+some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to visit
+her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he spoke
+volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of brother
+and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held himself and
+Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then merely to give me
+the news that people here wanted no more of Nate Buckner; he would be run
+out of the country, and respect for the sister was all that meanwhile
+saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared criminals, seemed brazenly
+unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing loudly any riders or drivers
+we met, while beside him his sister sat close and straight, her stanch
+affection and support for the world to see. For all she let appear, she
+might have been bringing him back from some gallant heroism achieved; and
+as I rode along the travesty seemed more and more pitiful, the outcome
+darker and darker.
+
+At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun
+draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream
+comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along
+the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that we
+saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of
+light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern
+masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and
+amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about the
+levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the
+brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I heard
+him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had he been
+honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and dashing
+appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment than he
+could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a horse that
+few would dare, and she listened eagerly. "Do you remember when I used to
+hold the pony for you to get on?" she said. "You always would scare me,
+Nate!" And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see that horse there,
+near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and she would find no
+one had tried getting on his back since he had been absent. This was the
+first question he asked on reaching the cabin, where various neighbors
+were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was right, he turned in
+pride to Jessamine.
+
+"They don't know how to handle that horse," said he. "I told you so.
+Give me a rope."
+
+Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only was
+their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold
+riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for
+cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had
+been in the Buffalo saloon.
+
+"The trick is easy enough," said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and
+liking an audience. "You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like
+this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a
+sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the
+mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their
+fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!"
+
+He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed,
+trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and
+knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and
+bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the
+rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve,
+rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on
+without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we
+cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something
+awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise to silence. The
+horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden towards us, a
+wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until the head sank on
+the horse's rump.
+
+"Come away," said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed and
+went, leaning on his arm.
+
+Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards,
+having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse had
+crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly unconscious,
+being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair
+cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world
+that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him
+home, which his sister at first wished to do. "Why, I came here to bring
+him home," she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax. Her
+calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was
+surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she saw her
+calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was Lin gave
+her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence. He spoke
+no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the
+burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said
+to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some
+mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell
+her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the same
+authority of that first "come away"; "Now you've had enough of the
+talking. Come for a walk." Enough of the talking--as if it were a
+treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed
+him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and along the
+curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only point did the
+cow-puncher consult me.
+
+"They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound," said he. "But she
+has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where
+she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at him
+to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory. But
+I'd like to show you my idea before going further."
+
+Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first
+sight of it.
+
+"That's all I wanted to know," said he. "I'll fix the rest."
+
+I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far
+as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to
+hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and
+sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate
+laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those
+walks.
+
+But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied
+with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.
+On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he
+inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in
+Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt
+myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so. My advice to
+him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to be made plain--
+would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning he and Billy
+were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs.
+Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where
+we had come for part of a week.
+
+But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.
+
+Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful,
+serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom
+your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it
+froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business
+diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my
+choicest correspondence; this one, especially:
+
+
+                           "Wensday four a. m.
+
+"DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important
+bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You
+will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner
+of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss J.
+Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor
+accommodations.
+
+                           Yours &c.     L. McLEAN."
+
+
+This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound) that
+this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give herself to a
+lover was distasteful to me.
+
+But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and she
+was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank surprise
+at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from her lips,
+at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as to her
+opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from them.
+
+"Let us talk straight," said I. "Do you mean that Miss Buckner says that,
+or that you say it?"
+
+"Why, the poor thing says nothing!" exclaimed the lady. "It's like a man
+to think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're all
+just the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going to
+know what I think of him next time we meet."
+
+He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boy
+in the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile we
+did not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtle
+or cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in her
+loneliness had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.
+
+Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable
+roof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in
+the hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung to
+the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when I
+told her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked to
+the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one
+life-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the
+receding town and mountains. "It's awful to be leaving him!" she said.
+"Excuse me for acting so in front of you." With the poignant emptiness
+overcoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in
+Illinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he
+must have gone with her.
+
+How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have
+come to him? But I said: "You know you don't think it was your fault. You
+know you would do the same again." She listened to me, but her eyes had
+no interest in them. "He never knew pain," I pursued, "and he died doing
+the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying himself,
+and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk religion,
+but I can't."
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank you
+for saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to want it--
+to hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly."
+
+During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said
+was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the wounds
+of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no higher
+sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already
+held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky
+notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage
+called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers.
+Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that
+was in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements
+brought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when
+at last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at
+the suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped
+out of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed
+and beamed.
+
+"So I went away without telling you goodbye!" he began, not wisely. "Mrs.
+Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!"
+
+The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. "Indeed? There was no special
+obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't."
+
+"Oh!" said Lin, crestfallen. "Yu' sure don't mean that?"
+
+She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. "No, neighbor, I don't mean
+it."
+
+"Neighbor!" he exclaimed; and again, "Neighbor," much pleased. "Now it
+would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing."
+
+"It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you."
+
+"Blamed if I understand her," cried Lin. "Blamed if I do. But you're
+going to understand me sure quick!" He rushed inside the station, spoke
+sharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that had
+pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed near
+bursting. "I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter, and I
+expect I know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here." He took it from
+the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. "You needn't to
+fear. Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!" He watched it
+in her hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a Christmas parcel
+he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully untie. "Open it,"
+he urged again. "Keeping me waiting this way!"
+
+"What in the world does all this mean?" cried Jessamine, stopping short
+at the first sentence.
+
+"Read," said Lin.
+
+"You've done this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Read, read!"
+
+So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad,
+written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss Buckner
+might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she was willing
+to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her way east, and
+talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more than she had
+been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she could continue
+east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent believed the salary
+could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to find an order for a
+free ride to Edgeford.
+
+Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. "You did do this," she
+repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
+
+"Yes," said he. "And I am plumb proud of it."
+
+She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and
+stopped. "Did anybody ever!" she said.
+
+"We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"Oh no! oh no!" Jessamine declared. "Though how am I ever to thank you?"
+
+"By not argufying," Lin answered.
+
+"Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
+are crazy."
+
+"I've been waiting to hear yu' say that," said the complacent McLean.
+"I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an
+hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it."
+
+"And I expect I'll go, too," said the girl.
+
+"I'll be plumb proud to have yu'," the cow-puncher assented.
+
+"I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now," said Jessamine, again
+laughing, sunny and defiant.
+
+"You bet you are!" said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into the
+station serenely. "You can't get used to new ideas in a minute," he
+remarked to me. "I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why," he
+broke out, impetuously, "I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When she
+goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll you
+do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just knew I'd
+have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble inconvenient--Billy
+here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but how could I let her
+go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back
+there? And I hated the fix I was in till that morning, getting up, I was
+joshin' the Virginia man that's after Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no
+educated lady would think of a man who talked with an African accent.
+'It's repotted you have a Southern rival yourself,' says he, joshin'
+back. So I said I guessed the rival would find life uneasy. 'He does,'
+says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in two halves, and one down in his
+stomach and one up among the angels, is goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas
+talks a heap about his lady vigilante in the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I
+said; and I must have jumped, for they all asked where the lightning had
+struck. And in fifteen minutes after writing you I'd hit the trail for
+Separ. Oh, I figured things out on that ride!" (Mr. McLean here clapped
+me on the back.) "Got to Separ. Got the sheriff's address--the sheriff
+that saw her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me
+at Edgeford and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk
+myself. I said, 'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit
+shooting your water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?'
+says the superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the
+agent, he flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him
+and went to rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation
+to the boys to be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can
+choose between Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move
+one of 'em from Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good,
+too. He said a man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a
+decent woman would be respected there, and the only question was if she
+could conduct the business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the
+whole idea began to soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled
+and he looked as wise as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's
+going to see her."
+
+"Well," said I, "you deserve success after thinking of a thing like that!
+You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago. By
+eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent."
+
+"Why, so she will!" said Lin, affecting surprise.
+
+He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her
+parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination
+of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly
+failed to gratify her.
+
+Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more
+dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave
+something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during
+supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, "I hope I shall 
+see Mr. Donohoe."
+
+"Texas?" said Lin. "I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at
+the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet."
+
+"He can walk round a freight-car all night," said Miss Buckner, stoutly.
+"I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me."
+
+Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
+
+"Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!" cried out Jessamine
+"Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean,
+you surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!"
+
+"Shucks!" began Lin.
+
+But her laughter routed him. "Maybe you didn't notice you were young,"
+she said. "But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe
+even the girls kind o' did!"
+
+"She's hard to beat, ain't she?" inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
+
+In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found
+him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say
+good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and
+repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said
+the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the
+treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she
+made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
+
+"Don't you ride any more cow-catchers," she warned Billy Lusk, "or I'll
+have to come back and look after you."
+
+"You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't," shouted the
+long-memoried nine-year-old. "You will," murmured Mr. McLean, oracularly.
+
+As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner cried
+"Jump!"
+
+"Too late," said he, placidly. Then he called to me, "I'm hard to beat,
+too!" So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his
+intention all along.
+
+"Is that marriage again?" said Billy, anxiously. "He wouldn't tell me
+nothing."
+
+"He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford," said the agent. "Be
+back to-morrow."
+
+"Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along," Billy complained. And
+Separ laughed.
+
+But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip
+remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains
+made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring
+bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep was
+unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town. Separ
+lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a while. But
+news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be sifted
+through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
+
+That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but
+the Eastern States.
+
+"It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used
+to us," said the Virginian.
+
+"We can't tell him good-bye," said Honey Wiggin. "Separ'll be slow."
+
+"We can give his successor a right hearty welcome," the Virginian
+suggested.
+
+"That's you!" said Honey. "Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're the
+leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a
+faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm."
+
+"Yes," drawled the Southerner, "that's what I'm aiming to do."
+
+So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty
+welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean. He
+reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly
+casual.
+
+"Bring your new wife?" they inquired.
+
+"No; she preferred Kentucky," Lin said.
+
+"Bring the old one?"
+
+"No; she preferred Laramie."
+
+"Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl," said the Virginian.
+
+"Sure!" said Mr. McLean. "I quit at Edgeford."
+
+He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and
+being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle had
+gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.
+
+But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from its
+lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, "You'll see her
+to-morrow if you go in with the outfit." Then, looking round to make sure
+we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket, cherishingly, a
+little shining pistol. "Hers," said he, simply.
+
+I looked at him.
+
+"We've exchanged," he said.
+
+He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night when
+Jessamine had taken his heart captive.
+
+"My idea," he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. "See
+this, too."
+
+I looked, and there was the word "Neighbor" engraved on it.
+
+"Her idea," said he.
+
+"A good one!" I murmured.
+
+"It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept
+the superintendent's proposition." Here Lin fired his small exchanged
+weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. "She can beat that with mine!" he
+exclaimed, proud and tender. "She took four days deciding at Edgeford,
+and I learned her to hit the ace of clubs." He showed me the cards they
+had practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in a
+book as if they were pressed flowers. "They won't get crumpled that way,"
+said he; and he further showed me a tintype. "She's got the other at
+Separ," he finished.
+
+I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he
+deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand
+again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some
+work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as
+Kentucky. "But how in the world," I asked him, "did you persuade her to
+stop over at Edgeford at all?"
+
+"Yu' mustn't forget," said the lover (and he blushed), "that I had her
+four hours alone on the train."
+
+But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next
+day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was
+so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment!
+He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was a
+joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the
+Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on.
+He suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change at
+Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.
+
+"We mostly take their tricks," observed the Virginian.
+
+"Yes," said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, "that's so, too."
+
+Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness
+of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of legend--
+more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and no serious
+horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and copious
+howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like
+rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in
+there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and
+leaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door
+stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped
+in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped
+rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling up
+for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his grin
+spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: "Why, excuse me, ma'am!
+Good-morning."
+
+There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the
+open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to
+welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of
+Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place, and the
+great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging water-tank
+shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.
+
+The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at
+itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and
+removed its foolish hat.
+
+"Good-morning, gentlemen," said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her
+railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.
+
+"If you have any letters, ma'am," said the Virginian, more inventive,
+"I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's." He knew the judge's office
+was seventy miles from here.
+
+"Any for the C. Y.?" muttered another, likewise knowing better.
+
+It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the
+mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which
+some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no
+letters ever came for these names!
+
+There was no letter for any one present.
+
+"I'm sorry, truly," said Jessamine behind the railing. "For you seemed
+real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,
+please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand things
+yet."
+
+"Yes, m'm."
+
+"Good-day, m'm."
+
+"Thank yu', m'm.'
+
+They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
+
+"No, she don't understand things yet," soliloquized the Virginian. "Oh
+dear, no." He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. "You Lin McLean," said
+he, in his gentle voice, "you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
+mawnin'."
+
+Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
+small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and
+vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and
+here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
+
+Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge
+of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx
+observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean "'Neighbor' is as cute a name
+for a six-shooter as ever I heard," said he. "But she'll never have need
+of your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she
+hearkens to your courtin'."
+
+That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. "Plumb strange,"
+he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, "how a man
+will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one."
+
+"Your hair seems black as ever," said I.
+
+"My hopes ain't so glossy any more," he answered. "Lin has done better
+this second trip."
+
+"Mrs. Lusk don't count," said I.
+
+"I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her
+clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky." And the Virginian
+fell silent again.
+
+Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder
+that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his
+idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a good
+shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of
+possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They would
+have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the
+water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one or
+another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters, and
+brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin, more
+original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an ace of
+clubs. "I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a shootin'-match,"
+he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more objectionable shooting
+than this. Texas brought her presents of game--antelope, sage-chickens--
+but, shyness intervening, he left them outside the door, and entering,
+dressed in all the "Sunday" that he had, would sit dumbly in the lady's
+presence. I remember his emerging from one of these placid interviews
+straight into the hands of his tormentors.
+
+"If she don't notice your clothes, Texas," said the Virginian, "just
+mention them to her."
+
+"Now yer've done offended her," shrilled Manassas Donohoe. "She heard
+that."
+
+"She'll hear you singin' sooprano," said Honey Wiggin. "It's good this
+country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and
+corrupt your morals."
+
+"You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man," observed the
+Virginian. "Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass."
+
+But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he
+found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no one.
+Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he had
+gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But more
+than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye to
+Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a
+wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. "She can have it," he told me. "I like
+her." Then he stole a look at his guardian. "If they get married and send
+me back to mother," said he, "I'll run away sure." So school and this old
+dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky, who suspected
+nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his hearth. His
+Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted chickens there;
+since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen at his cabin,
+worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them with equal care.
+Spring would see him married, he told me.
+
+"This time right!" he exclaimed. "And I want her to know Billy some more
+before he goes to Bear Creek."
+
+"Ah, Bear Creek!" said Billy, acidly. "Why can't I stay home?"
+
+"Home sounds kind o' slick," said Lin to me. "Don't it, now? 'Home' is
+closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral, and
+ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're good,
+maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her about
+Laramie."
+
+Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses
+angrily to the corral.
+
+Lin nudged me, laughing. "I can rile him every time about Laramie," said
+he, affectionately. "I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store
+by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What
+do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--right
+after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says to
+me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about her
+brother and her sorrow." Lin paused. "And about me. I can't never tell
+you--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me
+picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because
+his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all
+that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't
+anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was your
+son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever
+gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!"
+
+As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: "I
+didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!"
+
+"Well, well, kid," said the cow-puncher, patting his head, "yu' needn't
+to, I guess."
+
+But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to
+the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we went
+over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots, a
+rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
+dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently
+on one.
+
+"Scanty room for company!" Jessamine said. "But we must make out this
+way--till we have another way." She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face
+darkened. "Do you know," she pursued to me, "with all those chickens Mr.
+McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here."
+
+"Livin' or dead do you want 'em?" inquired Lin.
+
+"Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--"
+
+"Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!" And we all laughed
+together.
+
+"You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?" spoke Billy, suddenly,
+from his stool.
+
+"I'd like to see anybody try to make you?" exclaimed Jessamine. "Who says
+any such thing?"
+
+"Lin did," said Billy.
+
+Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. "What a way to tease him!"
+she said. "And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!"
+
+"I never thought," said Lin the boisterous. "I wouldn't have."
+
+"Come sit here, Billy," said Jessamine. "Whenever he teases, you tell me,
+and we'll make him behave."
+
+"Honest?" persisted Billy.
+
+"Shake hands on it," said Jessamine.
+
+"Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And
+you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?"
+
+"Honest! Honest!" And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
+
+"Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either," stated Billy,
+relieved.
+
+Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
+
+"Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her."
+
+Jessamine gazed at Lin.
+
+"It's simple," said the cow-puncher. "It's all right."
+
+But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
+
+"It's all right," repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and
+looking down. "Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual."
+
+"Billy?" whispered Jessamine. "Then you--But his name is Lusk!"
+
+"Course it is," said Billy. "Father and mother are living in Laramie."
+
+"It's all straight," said the cow-puncher. "I never saw her till three
+years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come
+easy to tell."
+
+I rose. "Miss Buckner," said I, "he will tell you. But he will not tell
+you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.
+It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten."
+
+But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on
+Lin, and her face remained white.
+
+I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to
+the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to
+sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I
+walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith,
+ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could
+have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had it
+to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with
+something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the
+moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow,
+seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of
+the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and
+near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were
+in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the
+water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx
+emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a
+door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up
+and spoke in a half-awed voice.
+
+"She's a-crying," said he.
+
+I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: "I'm
+sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
+sat, and when she started crying he made me go away."
+
+"I don't believe she's mad," I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
+he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the
+plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young
+Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he
+who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.
+But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened,
+and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and
+stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the
+door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
+
+"What?" I said at length.
+
+I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him
+gently. "Wake, son," said he. "You and I must get to our camp now."
+
+"Now?" said Billy. "Can't we wait till morning?"
+
+"No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the
+saddles on." As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. "She is
+in there," he said. "She's in there. So near." He looked, and turned to
+the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. "I
+understand her words," he continued. "Her words, the meaning of them. But
+not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't
+blame me!" he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
+
+"Lin," I answered, "she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile."
+
+"That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she
+forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I
+didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she
+never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that
+was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long--and
+I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she
+says I have a wife livin'."
+
+"That is nonsense," I declared.
+
+"Yu' mustn't say that," said he. "She don't claim she's a wife, either.
+She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
+different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her
+view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
+that she's honest, and loves me true--" His voice broke for a moment.
+"She said she'd wait."
+
+"You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied," I said. "But
+perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--"
+
+"No," said the cow-puncher. "Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of
+something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it in
+that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and the
+chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and waked
+Billy to clear out and quit."
+
+"What did you tell her?" I asked.
+
+"Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.
+Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!"
+
+"Man, man!" said I, "go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll
+wait too--always!"
+
+"Would yu'?"
+
+"Look!" I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
+
+I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the
+horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its
+black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into
+the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the
+clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was
+weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving,
+ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not
+yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and
+Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded
+her in his arms.
+
+"Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!" she sobbed. She could not withhold this
+last good-bye.
+
+I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone,
+flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
+were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright
+moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
+window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing
+over Separ.
+
+
+
+
+
+DESTINY AT DRYBONE
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to
+ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
+and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not
+guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it.
+Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine
+Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she
+been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine. Had this
+experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr. McLean
+the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said
+that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr.
+McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what
+she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and "yours
+sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'" Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk--if
+Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop
+quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and
+there she would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not
+like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would
+adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin--until the school
+opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about
+how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any
+man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon--
+young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink--
+the only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.
+
+"I can write a lot quicker than Lin," said Billy, upon arriving. "He was
+fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling
+in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
+the cabin for my clothes."
+
+"You don't say!" said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
+again.
+
+When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
+box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at
+Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors. But
+sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss
+Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
+
+Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages
+being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. "Honey
+Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls," he remarked. "He says you
+couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin
+ain't worked it like he done in old times."
+
+"Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right," said Jessamine, buoyantly. "And 
+that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it 
+clears, and then we'll go for our ride."
+
+"Yes," said Billy. When does a man get too old to marry?"
+
+"I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know."
+
+"Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he
+must be thirty."
+
+"Old!" exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her
+table.
+
+"But Lin ain't been married very much," pursued Billy. "Mother's the only
+one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?"
+
+"It's better to," said Jessamine.
+
+"Ah, I don't think so," said Billy, with disparagement. "You ought to see
+mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though," said
+the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. "Why won't you if he
+don't mind?"
+
+She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
+eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph
+called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries
+about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him
+to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly
+silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four
+o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.
+
+"Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you." He was at the window,
+kicking the wall.
+
+"That's nine times since dinner," she replied, with tireless good humor.
+"Now if you ask me twelve--"
+
+"You'll tell?" said the boy, swiftly.
+
+She broke into a laugh. "No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home. When
+I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me three
+times."
+
+"I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!"
+
+"Better save 'em up, though."
+
+"What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty all
+over." He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been
+tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the
+dust like a sea. "I wish the old train would come," observed Billy,
+continuing to kick the wall. "I wish I was going somewheres." Smoky,
+level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred
+unbroken miles. The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute
+the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above
+this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose
+bulging into the clear sun. The sand spirals would lick like flames along
+the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward. It was not shipping season.
+The freight-cars stood idle in a long line. No cattle huddled in the
+corrals. No strangers moved in town. No cow-ponies dozed in front of the
+saloon. Their riders were distant in ranch and camp. Human noise was
+extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place lay
+dead in its flapping shroud of dust. "Why won't you tell me?" droned
+Billy. For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed away.
+
+"That's ten times," said Jessamine, promptly.
+
+"Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as
+less glad now."
+
+"Well," said Jessamine, "there's a man coming to-day to mend the
+government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would
+take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I
+ask him?"
+
+Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not
+make a direct rejoinder. "I guess I'll go outside now," said he, with a
+threat in his tone.
+
+She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one side
+of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
+
+"And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the freight-cars,"
+he stated, more loudly.
+
+She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without
+restraint.
+
+"And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!" he shouted. "Just as
+if I was a baby."
+
+"Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?"
+
+"All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes
+you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you
+don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just
+like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me--"
+
+"Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to
+tell them?"
+
+"That's not a bit the same, because--because--because I treat 'em square
+and because it's not their business. But every time I ask anybody 'most
+anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and I'll be ten
+soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a mother I'm
+agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em, when they
+bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I had. Guess I
+will, too, and watch 'em step around." For a moment his mind dwelt upon
+this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
+
+"Goodness, Billy!" said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking.
+"The whole heel is scorched off."
+
+He eyed the ruin with indifference. "Ah, that was last month when I and
+Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs. Chuck
+it away."
+
+"And spoil the pair? No, indeed!"
+
+"Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped from
+home. Lin kind o' mends 'em."
+
+"Does he?" said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
+
+"Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's
+and things?"
+
+"Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd
+be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?"
+
+"Oh!" Billy pondered. "And so I said to Lin," he continued, "why didn't
+he send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey
+Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the
+cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she
+chucked 'em like she always did father's and mine. I was with father, you
+know, when mother was married to Lin that time." He paused again, while
+his thoughts and fears struggled. "But Lin says I needn't ever go back,"
+he went on, reasoning and confiding to her. "Lin don't like mother any
+more, I guess." His pondering grew still deeper, and he looked at
+Jessamine for some while. Then his face wakened with a new theory. "Don't
+Lin like you any more?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh," cried Jessamine, crimsoning, "yes! Why, he sent you to me!"
+
+"Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to
+you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's
+another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you any
+more."
+
+"Why, I hope he loves me," murmured Jessamine. "Always."
+
+"Well, I hope so too," said Billy, earnestly. "For I like you. When I
+seen him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed for
+you, I was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be awful.
+I wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things. Ah,
+pshaw! I wasn't going to stand that." Billy now came close to Jessamine.
+"I do wish you would come and live with me and Lin," said he. "Lin's
+awful nice."
+
+"Don't I know it?" said Jessamine, tenderly.
+
+"Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him," went on Billy. "And
+I seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you found
+out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing happens
+at all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?"
+
+Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was
+not going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever
+things she had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
+
+Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train, and
+the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties behind
+the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the window
+to watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed out from
+the yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then with steam
+and humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long dust-choked
+train emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted. There was no
+one to go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The conductor looked
+in on business, but she had no telegraphic orders for him. The express
+agent jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He received his daily smile
+and nod of friendly discouragement. Then the light bundle of mail was
+flung inside the door. Separ had no mail to go out. As she was picking up
+the letters young Billy passed her like a shadow, and fled out. Two
+passengers had descended from the train, a man and a large woman. His
+clothes were loose and careless upon him. He held valises, and stood
+uncertainly looking about him in the storm. Her firm, heavy body was
+closely dressed. In her hat was a large, handsome feather. Along between
+the several cars brakemen leaned out, watched her, and grinned to each
+other. But her big, hard-shining blue eyes were fixed curiously upon the
+station where Jessamine was.
+
+"It's all night we may be here, is it?" she said to the man, harshly.
+
+"How am I to help that?" he retorted.
+
+"I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to
+Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek."
+
+She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He
+entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
+
+"Good-evening," he said. "Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here."
+
+"For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the
+pole-wagon at Drybone."
+
+This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out
+and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because
+Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
+
+"Governor Barker has not been around here?" he said.
+
+"Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip."
+
+"I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?"
+
+"I reckon so, sir." Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself
+out. Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was
+mostly achieved thus, in amity.
+
+On the platform the man found his wife again.
+
+"Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's," she said. "And we'll eat as we
+travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her." She made a gesture
+toward the station.
+
+"Why--why--what do you want with her. Don't you know who she is?"
+
+"It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been
+and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes
+of her talks to the likes of me."
+
+He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
+
+"Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus
+clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush,
+why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it was
+you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this country
+to have a look at my old friends--and" (she laughed loudly and nodded at
+the station) "my old friends' new friends!"
+
+Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
+
+Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned to
+her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and heard
+a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the large woman
+with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the stranger
+spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was something of
+threat in the strong animal countenance, something of laughter ready to
+break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been in the face, and
+now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag look of assertion that
+it was still all there. Many stranded travellers knocked at Jessamine's
+door, and now, as always, she offered the hospitalities of her neat
+abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman. As she spoke, and the
+guest surveyed and listened, the door blew shut with a crash.
+
+Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
+father.
+
+"How you have grown!" the man was saying; and he smiled. "Come, shake
+hands. I did not think to see you here."
+
+"Dare you to touch me!" Billy screamed. "No, I'll never come with you.
+Lin says I needn't to."
+
+The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the
+wheel. "Lord, Lord!" he muttered.
+
+His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
+bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
+and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in his
+whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were there to
+perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved together
+upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered in the opens by
+the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and golden-chimneyed
+bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the greater valley.
+Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered the mountains
+where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel of shafts and
+turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the trees. Through
+there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the cool quaking asps
+and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ. Along the
+ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream, sat McLean's
+turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by his cabin and
+fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney into the air, in
+which were no sounds but the running water and the afternoon chirp of
+birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher sat, lonely,
+inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were not already
+long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of him--a small
+cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with bullets which he
+had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently he lifted the
+pistol and looked at its name--the word "Neighbor" engraved upon it.
+
+"I wonder," said he, aloud, "if she keeps the rust off mine?" Then he
+lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word "Neighbor."
+
+The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
+down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but no
+one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little
+distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for
+the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they
+came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat
+down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in
+silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with
+good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the eye.
+As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now, upright,
+bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled upon her
+stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to everything
+around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead noise, the
+reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung low. So they
+drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into his face and
+went away.
+
+"Good-evening," said he, clearing his throat. "We heard you was in
+cow-camp."
+
+The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change
+crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs
+out as he sat.
+
+"You look natural," said the woman, familiarly.
+
+"Seem to be fixed nice here," continued the man. "Hadn't heard of it.
+Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you."
+
+"Your wheel wants greasing," said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
+
+"Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening."
+
+"Stay to supper," said McLean, always seated on his chair.
+
+"Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone." He twitched the
+reins.
+
+McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. "Better
+stay to supper," he suggested, very distinctly.
+
+"It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before he--"
+
+The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. "Better
+stay to supper," drawled McLean.
+
+The man looked up at his wife.
+
+"So yus need me!" she broke out. "Ain't got heart enough in yer
+played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down."
+
+The husband stepped to the ground. "I didn't suppose you'd want--"
+
+"Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out."
+
+Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her blue
+staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
+
+"No, yus ain't changed," she said. "Same in your looks and same in your
+actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?"
+
+"I just wanted chickens for supper," said he.
+
+Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. "I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.
+As for--" She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
+"Neighbor." "As for you," she continued to Mr. Lusk, "don't you be
+standing dumb same as the horse."
+
+"Better take him to the stable, Lusk," said McLean.
+
+He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his
+room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his
+guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he was,
+nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down in the
+air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he made ready
+round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the setting
+sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host looked into
+the door of the next room to announce that his meal was served, the woman
+sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back to him by a shelf.
+She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced something. He saw
+that she had been examining "Neighbor," and his face hardened suddenly to
+fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated quietly that she had
+better come in. Thus did the three sit down to their meal. Occasionally a
+word about handing some dish fell from one or other of them, but nothing
+more, until Lusk took out his watch and mentioned the hour.
+
+"Yu've not ate especially hearty," said Lin, resting his arms upon the
+table.
+
+"I'm going," asserted Lusk. "Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
+interests to look after."
+
+"Why, sure," said Lin. "I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
+me."
+
+Lusk rose and looked at his wife. "It'll be ten now before we get to
+Drybone," said he. And he went down to the stable.
+
+The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. "I know you seen
+me," she said, without looking at him.
+
+"Saw you when?"
+
+"I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me." She sat twisting and
+pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
+and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
+that he wished to reply.
+
+"If you claim that pistol is yourn," she said next, "I'll tell you I know
+better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have
+to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her."
+
+She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have
+seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his
+arms.
+
+"Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!" The woman uttered another sudden
+laugh. "I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in this world. Did
+not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time, and
+it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!" Her voice grew slow and
+absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: "It had
+travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was
+known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you,
+and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks
+that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have
+their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she
+knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin' the day
+you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and
+me up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was
+plain she did not want yus. It give me a queer feelin' to see that girl.
+It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and
+did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin! Yu' never hit me yet."
+
+"No," said the cow-puncher. "Nor now. I'm not Lusk."
+
+"Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.
+Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,
+'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!"
+
+"Yes," breathed McLean.
+
+"She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office, but--"
+
+"I know," the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
+
+"It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
+Jessamine Buckner?'"
+
+At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
+flash.
+
+"And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
+tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
+there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
+than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She put her
+hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never speaking.
+'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says she. 'Let me
+get used to it.' And she sat down.
+
+"Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
+
+"I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
+a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
+around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
+your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
+before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear Creek?
+It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right out
+different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
+
+"'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
+you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
+madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
+report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and hard
+work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to yus
+uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more that
+was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced. I
+knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
+time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
+go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
+her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
+
+"'I know," she says, thoughtful-like.
+
+"And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
+
+"'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that you
+have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
+different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
+luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
+suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is the
+kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
+hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
+like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
+best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a while. He
+wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss Jessamine.
+'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait, Lin, wait. Yus
+needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's walled up for a
+while."
+
+"She could have told you it was a lie," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
+'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus wants
+him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second Best.'
+
+"Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
+
+"And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
+says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
+little "Neighbor," which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
+his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after
+his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of
+mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'
+me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy
+thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell her
+about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to me
+till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the
+rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?
+You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, not
+mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right now--
+he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of his!
+Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't touch
+what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for you hinder
+him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is different when
+it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they ain't simple.
+They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make yus know, and I
+guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their nature. But you
+did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll be homeless in
+yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and found another
+girl.'
+
+"Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
+what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin' at
+me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw him
+I would tell him to find a home.'"
+
+"Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing her?"
+asked the cow-puncher.
+
+Mrs. Lusk laughed. "Oh, you innocent!" said she.
+
+"She said if I came she would leave Separ," muttered McLean, brooding.
+
+Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
+
+"I have kept my promise," Lin continued.
+
+"Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
+Maybe she's gone."
+
+"What's that?" said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. "I could be
+there by to-morrow night," he murmured. Then his face softened. "She
+would never do such a thing!" he said, to himself.
+
+He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
+that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
+interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
+eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
+him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
+beauty relighted the features.
+
+"You are the same, same Lin everyways," she said. "A woman is too many
+for you still, Lin!" she whispered.
+
+At her summons he looked up from his revery.
+
+"Lin, I would not have treated you so."
+
+The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
+quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
+
+"You!" he said. "At least I've had plenty of education in you."
+
+"Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
+come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
+
+"I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
+hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in you
+somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come to
+know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and you
+just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so comic
+and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon. Say,
+Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?"
+
+"I can't hardly say," said the cow-puncher. "Only noticing him so
+turruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking."
+
+"You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were
+good times."
+
+"Which times?"
+
+"You know. You can't tell me you have forgot."
+
+"I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?"
+
+"Yus never loved me!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Shucks!"
+
+"Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
+did. Only say it was once that way." And as he sat, she came and put her
+arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
+held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
+her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
+out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
+after him and smiling.
+
+McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
+where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his
+hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.
+Then he continued on his way. "Lusk!" he called, presently, and in a few
+steps more, "Lusk!" Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the
+husband he began, with quiet evenness, "Your wife wants to know--" But he
+stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The door
+was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the road
+went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars were
+faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks as
+they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the trees
+by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by sounded the
+splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses fed, quietly
+crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it again. He walked
+to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone there. Then he
+lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of the corral, while
+the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the roof. A rope was
+hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the vine. He opened
+the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle of the field,
+where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But he ran and
+herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the corral, and
+flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men's saddles-- from
+the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with the horses
+saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she had sat
+during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look in at
+the door.
+
+"Lusk has gone," said he. "I don't know what he expected you would do, or
+I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone."
+
+She looked at him with her dumb stare. "Gone?" she said.
+
+"Get up and ride," said McLean. "You are going to Drybone."
+
+"Drybone?" she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
+
+He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
+Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table
+clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she
+followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small bundle
+for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse beside
+a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his cabin and
+hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and be at home.
+
+She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed.
+"It's about his size," she murmured.
+
+Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--this
+they had often done together in former years--and so they took their way
+down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first
+two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to a
+canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees and
+pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
+greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
+through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
+this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
+to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
+
+"I will ask you one thing," said Lin, after ten miles.
+
+The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
+
+"Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might be
+going away from Separ?"
+
+"How do I know what you understood?"
+
+"I thought you said--"
+
+"Don't you bother me, Lin McLean." Her laugh rang out, loud and forlorn--
+one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have sounded far
+across the sage-brush. "You men are rich," she said.
+
+They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
+road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the
+endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and
+presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made
+out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
+
+"Put your carbine down," said McLean to Lusk. "It's not robbers. It's
+your wife I'm bringing you." He spoke very quietly.
+
+The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher "Get in, then," he said
+to his wife.
+
+"Town's not far now," said Lin. "Maybe you would prefer riding the balance
+of the way?"
+
+"I'd--" But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame
+her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
+continued slowly climbing the hill together.
+
+From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the road
+slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the
+immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the whole
+unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged from
+the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom it cut
+in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of sand,
+smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to breathe
+their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through the
+stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone bridge,
+but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank showed
+where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the
+table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief
+historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
+wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They passed
+by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings and high
+music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the sparse
+lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road. The
+many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
+their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
+known."
+
+"There's a dance to-night," said the wife to the husband. "Hurry."
+
+He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
+
+"I'm telling you to hurry," she repeated. "My new dress is in that wagon.
+There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than you."
+
+She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
+the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat and
+spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen voice
+carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
+following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
+he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher was
+still less to his mind.
+
+"It ain't only her he's stopped caring for," mused Lin, as he rode slowly
+along. "He don't care for himself any more."
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day its
+hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants were
+rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male and
+female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
+bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
+childhood which had set in.
+
+Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
+deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and foot,
+and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their captains upon
+its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of it. When the War
+Department ordered the captains to catch Indians, the wives bade them
+Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the captains to let the
+Indians go again, still they made the best of it. You must not waste
+Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many people in Washington
+and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians, armed with weapons
+sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was not entirely
+harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone graveyard. The
+pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it: "Sacred to the memory
+of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne, May 6, 1875." Or it
+would be, "Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage Creek." But even the
+financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve the Indian in
+Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands came treading with
+the next step of civilization into this huge domain, the soldiers were
+taken away. Some of them went West to fight more Indians in Idaho,
+Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being done, they went East
+in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or their comrades wanted
+them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon the hill, the ready-made
+graves and boxes which these soldiers left behind proved heirlooms as
+serviceable in their way as were the tenements that the living had
+bequeathed to Drybone. Into these empty barracks came to dwell and do
+business every joy that made the cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted
+person who was baffling the sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside
+the line of Drybone, as shall presently be made clear. The captain's
+quarters were a saloon now; professional cards were going in the
+adjutant's office night and day; and the commissary building made a good
+dance-hall and hotel. Instead of guard-mounting, you would see a
+horse-race on the parade-ground, and there was no provost-sergeant to
+gather up the broken bottles and old boots. Heaps of these choked the
+rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow, ragged grass that dotted the
+place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens and ten-spots, which
+the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of which they had been
+thrown when a new pack was called for inside. Among the grass tufts would
+lie visitors who had applied for beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly
+sleeping their whiskey off in the morning air.
+
+Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
+Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
+scalping had disappeared. "Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
+accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885." Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
+"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months." This unique
+corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
+
+But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
+tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
+enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
+wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
+than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
+sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
+to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
+said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
+poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
+directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
+coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
+to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
+boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
+new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
+by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
+be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
+tenant had answered.
+
+So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
+history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
+line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
+slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
+the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
+For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed over
+to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
+government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
+The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
+Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
+not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
+the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
+coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
+in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally of
+Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
+industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a
+living. The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and
+instantly spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies full of
+youth and their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by twenties, by
+fifties, and out again next morning, penniless always and happy. And then
+the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each other till the
+innocents should come to town again.
+
+To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
+furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
+post and corner--patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was an
+all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the saloons;
+they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards at the
+tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for their easy
+sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the fiddle at Mrs.
+Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds there, the dance
+was being done regularly. "Regularly" meant that upon the conclusion of
+each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and invited her to choose
+and it was also regular that the lady should choose. Beer and whiskey
+were the alternatives.
+
+Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
+cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
+saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
+what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see
+why his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so many
+gallant years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely
+cow-puncher sat mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
+
+"Toothpick Kid is here," said he, "and Limber Jim, and the Doughie. You'd
+think he'd stay away after the trouble he--I expect that pinto is Jerky
+Bill's."
+
+"Go home!" said a hearty voice.
+
+McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
+sombreness. "I'd forgot you'd be here," said he. And he sprang to the
+ground. "It's fine to see you."
+
+"Go home!" repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient friend's
+hand. "You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
+
+"Yu' seem to be on hand yourself," said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
+jocular, if he could.
+
+"Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
+can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then--"
+
+"Doc," interrupted Lin, "it's plumb fine to see yu'!" Again he shook
+hands.
+
+"Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I." His Excellency the Hon.
+Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
+white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
+McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp,
+a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an
+older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different
+questions. But he knew what he knew. "Well, Drybone's the same old
+Drybone," said he. "Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see how you
+walk nowadays."
+
+Lin took a few steps.
+
+"Pooh! I said you'd never get over it." And his Excellency beamed with
+professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
+leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the
+hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon he
+had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
+
+"It shows, does it?" said Lin. "Well, it don't usually. Not except when
+I'm--when I'm--"
+
+"Down?" suggested his Excellency.
+
+"Yes, Doc. Down," the cow-puncher confessed.
+
+Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
+
+Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the Governor's
+good heart. "I've got some whiskey along on the trip--Eastern whiskey,"
+said he. "Come over to my room awhile."
+
+"I used to sleep all night onced," said McLean, as they went. "Then I
+come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts
+could make yu'--make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat, yu'
+know!" he stated, suddenly. "And I expect one or two in camp lately have
+not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc."
+
+Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
+
+Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
+feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
+feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among
+the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard balls
+reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars and calm
+splendid dimness of the plain. "'Though every prospect pleases, and only
+man is vile,'" he quoted. "But don't tell the Republican party I said so."
+
+"It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
+didn't know!"
+
+And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
+world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
+over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
+Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and
+nodded his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should have
+done the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never remembered
+he was Governor at all with political friends here who had begged a word
+or two. He became just Dr. Barker again, the young hospital surgeon (the
+hospital that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again his patient----Lin,
+the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless, engaging, disobedient,
+his leg broken and his heart light, with no Jessamine or conscience to
+rob his salt of its savor. While he now told his troubles, the quadrilles
+fiddled away careless as ever, and the crack of the billiard balls
+sounded as of old.
+
+"Nobody has told you about this, I expect," said the lover. He brought
+forth the little pistol, "Neighbor." He did not hand it across to Barker,
+but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the doctor to
+see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was half hidden
+in the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but still stood and
+soon drew it back. "I take it around," he said, "and when one of those
+stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she wants to get rid of
+me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when I'm off where it's
+handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I have to tell you
+what a fool I am."
+
+"The whiskey's your side," said Barker. "Go on."
+
+"But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
+like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
+more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
+
+"I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
+'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know--"
+
+A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered.
+"Not been to our dance, Governor?" said he.
+
+The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this evening
+he must forego the pleasure.
+
+"It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable," said the
+coroner. "They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble
+in Drybone, but trouble comes to us--as everywhere."
+
+"Shooting," suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
+
+"Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any
+in this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
+warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything."
+
+"Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey," remarked the Governor.
+
+The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
+politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
+number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health
+the matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead of
+sleeping on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next
+campaign. "Boys will be boys," said he. "They ain't pulled any guns
+to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free to
+Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's after
+you," he mentioned incidentally to Lin. "He's fillin' up, and says he's
+after you." McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness. He wished
+this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the whiskey. He
+filled himself a glass. "Governor, it has my compliments," said he.
+"Ambrosier. Honey-doo."
+
+"Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering," said Barker.
+
+"Good boys, good boys!" The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
+"Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
+generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo." He settled himself
+deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
+
+McLean rose abruptly. "Good-night," said he. "I'm going to Separ."
+
+"Separ!" exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. "Oh, stay with us, stay
+with us." He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
+
+"You know how well I wish you," said Barker to Lin. "I'll just see you
+start."
+
+Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and walked
+toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead ruins
+loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen jockey
+cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and confusion
+were set up, and the tune broke off.
+
+"Just like old times!" said his Excellency. "Where's the dump-pile!" It
+was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to be
+screened from wandering bullets. "A man don't forget his habits,"
+declared the Governor. "Makes me feel young again."
+
+"Makes me feel old," said McLean. "Hark!"
+
+"Sounds like my name," said Barker. They listened. "Oh yes. Of course.
+That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
+minute or so to finish their excitement."
+
+"I didn't hear any shooting," said McLean. "It's something, though."
+
+As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and the
+murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices
+wandered outside, calling the doctor's name.
+
+"I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip," said he. "But it's to be done, I
+suppose."
+
+They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
+sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
+waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
+densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed and
+swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist, to be
+ready when the music should resume. "What is it?" they asked. "Who is
+it?" And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to the
+caresses which the partners gave them.
+
+Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
+after many dances and drinks.
+
+"Here's Doc!" cried an older one.
+
+"Here's Doc!" chorused the young blood that had come into this country
+since his day. And the throng caught up the words: "Here's Doc! here's
+Doc!"
+
+In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this
+flood. Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by those
+who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear
+unfinished--versions, contradictions, a score of facts. It had been
+wolf-poison. It had been "Rough on Rats." It had been something in a
+bottle. There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker
+reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with
+wild inebriate gayety.
+
+"I must get her to her room, friends," said he.
+
+"He must get her to her room," went the word. "Leave Doc get her to her
+room." And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
+
+"Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'" shouted Mrs. Lusk.... "'Buffalo Girls,' you
+fiddler!"
+
+"We'll come back," said Barker to her.
+
+"'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that
+bottle, Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!" She was holding the
+chair.
+
+"Help him!" said the crowd. "Help Doc."
+
+They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of ribbons,
+fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
+
+"She has six ounces of laudanum in her," Barker told them at the top of
+his voice. "It won't wait all night."
+
+"I'm a whirlwind!" said Mrs. Lusk. "That's my game! And you done your
+share," she cried to the fiddler. "Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
+Girls' once more!"
+
+She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling and
+ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some fiercely
+forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers, and she
+would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for her. But now
+she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin McLean. And when
+one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone to shoot him, she
+laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth. But even in the midst
+of the joke she asked again in the same voice where was Lin McLean. He
+came beside her among more jokes. He had kept himself near, and now at
+sight of him she reached out and held him. "Tell them to leave me go to
+sleep, Lin," said she.
+
+Barker saw a chance. "Persuade her to come along," said he to McLean.
+"Minutes are counting now."
+
+"Oh, I'll come," she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
+still to Lin.
+
+The rest of the old friends nudged each other. "Back seats for us," they
+said. "But we've had our turn in front ones." Then, thinking they would
+be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering
+Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made
+its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and
+holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set her
+down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest
+gathered thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing.
+The notion to stay was plain on their faces.
+
+Barker surveyed them. "Give the doctor a show now, boys," said he.
+"You've done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you," he
+whispered to McLean.
+
+At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering of
+wind. "Don't crowd his elbows," they began to say at once, and told each
+other to come away. "We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want to be
+shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty near
+absent." The room thinned of them forthwith. "Fix her up good, Doc," they
+said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the threshold and porch
+with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one or other stumbled on
+the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet. "You want to tame
+yourself," was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid came
+precipitately back. "Her cash," they said. And leaving the notes and
+coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on the way back to the dance
+
+"I want you," repeated Barker to McLean.
+
+"Him!" cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. "Jessamine wants him about
+now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!" And she laughed her hard,
+rich laugh, looking from one to the other. "Not the two of yus can't save
+me," she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
+thickness sounded.
+
+"Walk her up and down," said Barker. "Keep her moving. I'll look what I
+can find. Keep her moving brisk." At once he was out of the door; and
+before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
+across the quadrangle.
+
+"'Buffalo Girls!'" exclaimed the woman. "Old times! Old times!"
+
+"Come," said McLean. "Walk." And he took her.
+
+Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
+him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
+he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
+open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark. But
+presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned sullen.
+
+"Walk," said McLean.
+
+"Do you think so?" said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
+with him. Thus they took a few more turns.
+
+"You're hurting me," she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
+her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. "He's gone, Lin,"
+she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
+
+She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
+that he had set.
+
+"Leave me down. You hurt," she pleaded, hanging on him.
+
+The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
+
+"Just the floor," she pleaded again. "Just one minute on the floor. He'll
+think you could not keep me lifted."
+
+Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
+had undertaken.
+
+"He's playing out!" she exclaimed. "You'll be played out soon." She
+laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
+to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
+"Jessamine!" she whispered to him. "Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion
+you, Lin."
+
+"Talk sense," said he.
+
+"It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll
+go; you can't--"
+
+"Walk, walk!" he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing his
+arms.
+
+"Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle--Ah, walk me to glory,
+then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for keeps.
+Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet--I'll bet she has never
+seen you look so. Let me--let me watch yus. Anyway, she knows I came
+first!"
+
+He grasped her savagely. "First! You and twenty of yu' don't--God!! what
+do I talk to her for?"
+
+"Because--because--I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off--but he had to
+sling--you can't--stop--"
+
+Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through
+deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
+continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
+with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
+shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
+body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
+breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
+fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. "Buffalo Girls!" he
+shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her as
+though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to wake,
+he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load in his
+grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
+
+Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. "So I've got
+you!" he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came
+up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
+together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
+McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
+
+"Thank God!" said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged and
+encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him, threatened
+him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left him suddenly
+and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him here. He glanced
+at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men. The husband's
+brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who himself could not
+rise. Barker pulled them apart.
+
+"Lin, boy, you're not hurt?" he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
+cow-puncher.
+
+McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
+
+"You're not hurt?" repeated Barker.
+
+"No," answered the cow-puncher, slowly. "I guess not." He looked about
+the room and at the door. "I got interrupted," he said.
+
+"You'll be all right soon," said Barker.
+
+"Nobody cares for me!" cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
+weeping.
+
+"Get up," ordered Barker, sternly.
+
+"Don't accuse me, Governor," screamed Lusk. "I'm innocent." And he rose.
+
+Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. "I'll not say there
+was much chance for her," he said. "But any she had is gone through you.
+She'll die."
+
+"Nobody cares for me!" repeated the man. "He has learned my boy to scorn
+me." He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
+room.
+
+"Stay sitting," said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
+
+But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
+help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
+sank as he had been. "I guess I don't amount to much," said he. "I feel
+like I was nothing."
+
+"Well, I'm something," said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
+breath. "And I know what she weighs." He stared admiringly through his
+spectacles at the seated man.
+
+The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
+Barker's face. "Doc," said he, "ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
+this way?"
+
+His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
+
+"I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?" pursued McLean,
+wistfully.
+
+"You six-foot infant!" said Barker. "Look at your hand."
+
+Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
+raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
+had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
+his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
+bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
+not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
+
+"She is strong," he said. "Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
+yet, maybe. Queer world!" he moralized. "People half killing themselves
+to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!"
+
+McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
+him. "I would not want," he said, with hesitating utterance--"I'd not
+wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do
+to-night."
+
+Barker touched him on the arm. "If there had been another man I could
+trust--"
+
+"Trust!" broke in the cow-puncher. "Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu'
+ever done me. I know I am a man now--if my nerve ain't gone."
+
+"I've known you were a man since I knew you!" said the hearty Governor.
+And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. "As for your nerve,
+I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after"--he glanced at the bed--"and
+tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the nerve--"
+
+"Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'--don't let's while she's--
+I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but--"
+
+At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
+stammering to say. "What do you want, Judge?" he inquired, coldly.
+
+"I understand," began Slaghammer to Barker--"I am informed--"
+
+"Speak quieter, Judge," said the cow-puncher.
+
+"I understand," repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, "that there
+was a case for the coroner."
+
+"You'll be notified," put in McLean again. "Meanwhile you'll talk quiet
+in this room."
+
+Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
+
+"You are a little early, Judge," said Barker, "but--"
+
+"But your ten dollars are safe," said McLean.
+
+The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
+down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and
+he was desirous of a second term.
+
+"Under the apprehension that it had already occurred--the
+misapprehension--I took steps to impanel a jury," said he, addressing
+both Barker and McLean. "They are--ah--waiting outside. Responsible men,
+Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few responsible men to-night,
+but I procured these at a little game where they were--ah--losing. You
+may go back, gentlemen," said he, going to the door. "I will summon you
+in proper time." He looked in the room again. "Is the husband not
+intending--"
+
+"That's enough, Judge," said McLean. "There's too many here without
+adding him."
+
+"Judge," spoke a voice at the door, "ain't she ready yet?"
+
+"She is still passing away," observed Slaghammer, piously.
+
+"Because I was thinking," said the man--"I was just--You see, us jury is
+dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and--Judge,
+would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
+if it's a sure thing?"
+
+"I see none, my friend," said Slaghammer, benevolently, "since it must
+be." He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
+importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
+Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
+five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
+would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
+withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
+received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
+his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
+thirst.
+
+In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
+than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant to
+watch until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew
+documents from his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over
+them. In all precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late.
+The fiddle, the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls
+travelled clear and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently
+steps unsteadily drew near, and round the corner of the door a voice,
+plaintive and diffident, said, "Judge, ain't she most pretty near ready?"
+
+"Wake up, Judge!" said Barker. "Your jury has gone dry again."
+
+The man appeared round the door--a handsome, dishevelled fellow--with hat
+in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a second
+voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his friends.
+Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once to napping.
+From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each arriving more
+unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his fee and no more
+messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in his chair. McLean and
+Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink ribbons, breathed and
+breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping and falling with light
+sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear itself away, and through
+the stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and expand.
+
+Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
+also.
+
+"Judge," said Barker, quietly, "you may call them now." And with careful
+steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
+
+For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
+lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
+but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
+ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. "Hind
+sight is a turruble clear way o' seein' things," said he. "I think I'll
+take a walk."
+
+"Go," said Barker. "The jury only need me, and I'll join you."
+
+But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay
+had been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had
+shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their
+brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and
+growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant
+beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and
+thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the
+wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
+dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received
+Barker's testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even while
+he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars came
+Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in their
+hopes and good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both. The
+night had gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be fine. It
+must be well with everybody.
+
+"You don't say!" they exclaimed, taken aback. "Too bad."
+
+They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
+thought paused for a moment. "Her gone!" they murmured. "Hard to get used
+to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?"
+
+"Mr. Lusk," answered Slaghammer, "doubtless--"
+
+"Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the
+grass. She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill, Jerky
+Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse, and we'll be
+back." The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and instantly
+were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
+
+The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
+hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
+the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
+bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in the
+cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger until
+breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and joking;
+and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the level beyond
+the hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty, wandering shouts
+broke out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed at cans or prairie
+dogs or anything, cracked as they galloped at large. Their speeding,
+clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs, and, descending, merge in
+the dust their horses had raised. Yet all this was nothing in the
+vastness of the growing day.
+
+Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
+Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
+strange.
+
+Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
+riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
+grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was
+a calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead.
+It was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
+
+"It's a coffin, boys!" said one, shrewd at guessing.
+
+At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
+wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
+brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
+quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already were
+Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing up
+with their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and
+comment. Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And it
+amazed each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things with
+the others. "Dead!" each one began. "Her, does he say?"
+
+"Why, pshaw!"
+
+"Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!"
+
+Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. 
+"Dead? Why, pshaw!"
+
+"Seems Doc couldn't swim her out."
+
+"Couldn't swim her out?"
+
+"That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out."
+
+"Well--there's one less of us."
+
+"Sure! She was one of the boys."
+
+"She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84."
+
+"She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle."
+
+"I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter."
+
+"Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too."
+
+"I knowed her at Laramie."
+
+"Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne."
+
+They laughed loudly at this.
+
+"That's a lonesome coffin," said the Doughie. "That the best you could
+do?"
+
+"You'd say so!" said Toothpick Kid.
+
+"Choices are getting scarce up there," said Chalkeye. "We looked the lot
+over."
+
+They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on the
+hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
+rattling between them. "Where's your hearse, Jerky?" asked Chalkeye.
+
+"Have her round in a minute," said the cowboy, and galloped away with
+three or four others.
+
+"Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same," repeated the Doughie. And they
+surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
+
+"She did like fixin's," said Limber Jim.
+
+"Fixin's!" said Toothpick Kid. "That's easy."
+
+While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted coffin
+into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's store.
+Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These had been
+able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had stretched
+themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some with not
+even their hats taken off and some with their boots against the rough
+hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few waking, and
+so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs were unrolled
+and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the motionless
+sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards of this drab
+chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped upon the
+counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the coffin.
+While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse came
+tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an
+ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,
+concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they
+revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While
+some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies
+backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered
+by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted
+those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon
+her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and
+nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of the
+hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it might
+have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other end,
+waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in some
+way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however, still
+lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had done,
+they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could sit in
+their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held the
+heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They had
+never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held them.
+Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this moment
+arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled around
+them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last, with its
+four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and captured
+it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping men from the
+counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone outside and in
+for any more incapable of following, they brought them, and the dray was
+piled.
+
+Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
+teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
+away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
+past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
+grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
+throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
+teeth.
+
+"Stay with it, Jim!" they shouted. "You're a king!"
+
+A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and nearly
+hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from it
+leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air, he
+faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
+horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
+Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
+skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
+dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
+the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
+coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
+fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
+of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
+drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the slow
+dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
+whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
+riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
+scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker
+and McLean, quietly waiting there, and began choosing among the open,
+weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken. Their
+figures went up and down the uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
+
+"Here," said the Doughie, "here's a good hole."
+
+"Here's a deep one," said another.
+
+"We've struck a well here," said some more. "Put her in here."
+
+The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
+choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
+opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
+about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one end
+of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they pulled
+the ropes helplessly above.
+
+McLean spoke to Barker. "I'd like to stop this," said he, "but a man
+might as well--"
+
+"Might as well stop a cloud-burst," said Barker.
+
+"Yes, Doc. But it feels--it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
+McLeans." And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them
+and lifted the cow-boy out.
+
+"I think," said Slaghammer, stepping forward, "this should proceed no
+further without some--perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay me?"'
+
+"They don't use that on funerals," said the Doughie.
+
+"Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?" inquired the coroner.
+
+Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
+remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
+was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the hill
+in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so
+returned. But the book was beyond them. "Take it, you; you take it," each
+one said. False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages back
+and forth, until impatience conquered them. They left the book and
+lowered the coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly,
+decently, steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the
+bottom with was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid
+sand; and a little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the
+same moment. The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single
+jar, quietly smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One
+removed his hat, and then another, and then all. They stood eying each
+his neighbor, and shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley.
+Then they filled in the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near by,
+and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
+
+"She was sure one of us," said Chalkeye. "Let's give her the Lament."
+
+And they followed his lead:
+
+
+   "Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
+    Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
+    First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
+    Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
+
+   "Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
+    Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
+    Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
+    I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong."
+
+
+When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
+the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
+many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves had
+emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were gone--
+ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or heroes, as
+the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted quadrangle
+the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind shook the aces
+and kings in the grass.
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to
+mend, and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after that
+strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good man's
+heart without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands
+despatched it her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that
+visitor now, she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on
+her table. "Why did he go away so quickly?" she sighed. But when young
+Billy returned to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a
+match for him. He reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin
+McLean did not come back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she had
+threatened. She looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full of
+hope.
+
+"Billy, I'll tell you just why it is," said she. "Lin thinks I'm not a
+real girl."
+
+"A--ah," drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.
+
+"Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl--"
+
+"A--ah," went the boy, entirely angry. "Anybody can tell you're a girl."
+And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor did his
+dignity allow him to reopen the subject.
+
+To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
+jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
+passed him, and he had loudly called; but the rider rode on, intent upon
+the little distant station. Man and horse were soon far ahead of the boy,
+and the man came into town galloping.
+
+No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought
+to do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he held
+her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say "Forgive me! Oh, why have you
+been so long?" She took him back to the room where his picture was, and
+made him sit, and sat herself close. "What is it?" she asked him. For
+through the love she read something else in his serious face. So then he
+told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all that he had to
+tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him. "Dear, dear
+neighbor!" she said.
+
+As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young
+Billy burst open the door. "There!" he cried. "I knowed Lin knowed you
+were a girl!"
+
+Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he
+liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin on
+Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the only
+care of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though
+singularly enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care
+of Jessamine!
+
+
+
+ IN THE AFTER-DAYS
+
+ The black pines stand high up the hills,
+   The white snow sifts their columns deep,
+ While through the canyon's riven cleft
+   From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.
+
+ Serene above their paling shapes
+   One star hath wakened in the sky.
+ And here in the gray world below
+   Over the sage the wind blows by;
+
+ Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks,
+   And hums aloft a sturdy tune
+ Among the river's tawny bluffs,
+   Untenanted as is the moon.
+
+ Far 'neath the huge invading dusk
+   Comes Silence awful through the plain;
+ But yonder horseman's heart is gay,
+   And he goes singing might and main.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister
+
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