Lin McLean

Lin McLean Page 5

by Owen Wister

  SEPAR'S VIGILANTE

  We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging andjogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday werea pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goallay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean ofsage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, risinginto sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled ourundulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly,except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward againstWyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank andother buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children'sblocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotizedby the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of thedistant 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 mustknow 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 andpassed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."

  He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have knownmore of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now Iwaked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and itshaughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush forso spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) theemotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomedemployment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant therailroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as Idismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out ofthe station, and, at once remarking, "They're going to leave us alone,"sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, wheresome 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 hadgot a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety toappreciate the jests of these rollicking people. "Read it!" they said tome; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroadwas going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and wouldtrust to Separ's good feeling. "Nothing more," the letter ran, "will bedone about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shallpass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship willprove our genuine desire to benefit that section.

  "'Initial outrage,'" quoted one of the agent' large playmates. "Ain'tthey furgivin'?"

  "Well," said I, "you would have some name for it yourself if you sent adeputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to thecow-catcher!"

  The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.

  "We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about thelabel Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as persample.' Honey's quaint! Yes," he drawled judicially, "I'd be mad atthat. 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 tookthe paper from me, and read, sardonically: "'Subsequent vandalisms...wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to thecattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad'Policy of friendship... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!" And, shakinghis bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head ofthe agent. "Tubercle," said he (this was their name for the agent, whohad told all of us about his lungs), "it ain't your fault we saw theirfine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn'tbother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up lateover this joke."

  Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman hadhit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly aliveto frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but itsopposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed tothink of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board boxpainted "Hotel Brunswick"--"hotel" in small italics and "Brunswick" inenormous 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 achallenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along theline in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare wellknown; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasantyoung cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly byher to see about supper and lodging.

  At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the fourbeds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodgemyself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean mightride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corralsI could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trustedand whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, severalempties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of thesefreight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn bythree o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinkingthrough my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. Butwith clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill untilfive 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 thesmell of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswickto spend the remaining minutes in the air.

  "I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightenedhim!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too."Why," she explained, "I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which sideare 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 lessfellowship 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!" shecried, starting up. "There's trouble."

  "Not trouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be inearnest. And you would be safe here."

  "Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, weare respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovahyondah. 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 showingthe pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now Isuppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And sheeyed me with capable, good-humored satire.

  "Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."

  "Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he'sEnglish!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whisperedto 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 sofree with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat andeverything--I took you--You see I've always been that used to talkingto--to folks around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rosebefore her, and her eyes grew distant.

  I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall countrygirl 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 groundthere, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was acomrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in thedark as to them.

  "Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as faras twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to bescandalized, 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 b
ounded by my own farm either. No sectionalline, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, whenyou say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"

  "Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is tomost Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and youwere all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--notsince you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visityou, 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 aboutwriting."

  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 andforgiven.

  "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 journeywas now to that part of the cattle country.

  "To Buffalo?" she said, quickly. "Then maybe you--maybe--My brother isNate Buckner." She paused. "Then you're not acquainted with him?"

  "I may have seen him," I answered, slowly. "But faces and names out herecome 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 wildborder community that hated law courts and punishments had not beensorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charityof the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks anddaring 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 lonelyyears, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I totell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me ifthe stage went soon after supper.

  "Now isn't that a bother?" said she, when I answered that it did notstart till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. "Nevermind," she continued, briskly; "I'm used to things. I'll just sit upsomewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sureall 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 poorboy get hurt--even him deserving it!"

  "They use pistols instead of fire-crackers," said I. "But you must neversleep 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--asort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fableof its name.

  Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, railafter rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visiblyduring the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this pointthese unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. CampSeparation it had been fitly called, but how should the Americanrailway 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 ona board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, thefat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three treesbefore it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees.There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there werea hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed whereyou might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping timesenclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and thelittle station--some seven shanties all told. Between them were spacesof dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midstran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a greatstring from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one endin the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyondeach sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out ofsight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across thecontinent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemedmany and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grandesimilar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundredshung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorousyoung men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shootthem off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?

  And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error ofthe agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning HoneyWiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-upto telegraph for some additional cars.

  "I'm dead on to you!" squealed the official, dropping flat at the sightof them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thoughtit was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of thewater-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behindthe railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and somefifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forthto an understanding, and the message was written and paid for andcomfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tamehabits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwiseinappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a seriousreader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and theVirginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express moneyin 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 thatabout the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of theirround-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rodeout, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among themshould be so tactless.

  "If we don't get him used to us," observed the Virginian, "he and hispop-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 riotingwith pistols round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungsimproved, and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did notunderstand. But the company discerned no humor whatever in having itswater-tank perforated, which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputiesand other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ. Now whatshould authority do upon these free plains, this wilderness ofdo-as-you-please, where mere breathing the air was like inebriation? Thelarge, headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and outagain meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselvesresisted. Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; andlater a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they hadside-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his deathaccidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them foreverfrom baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things must beendured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrongthe letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten uponSepar its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (forexample) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself intown.

  It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work wouldbe 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 tothe corrals.

  A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here wasBilly Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with astick, 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 withthe outfit." And Billy resumed his specious activity.

  Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had t
ransientlyreminded him of politics. "Wall Street," he was explaining to the agent,"has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feedingalong to Chicago. We want--" Here he noticed me and, dragging hisgauntlet 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. Thenhe removed his eye. "Let's grub," he added to me. My friend did not walkto the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. "Billyis a good kid," he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick smallmounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was amatter dwelling with him, heavy and real. "He's dead stuck on being acow-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 dothe salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,"stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though Iknow that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. "ButBilly," Lin resumed, "has agreed to school again when it starts up inthe fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to." Affection creptanew over the cow-puncher's face. "He can learn books with the quickestwhen he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to havea regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesomehim seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--butshucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted.But when I found him the little calf could run and notice likeeverything!"

  "I should hate your contract, Lin," said I. "Adopting's a touch-and-gobusiness even when a man has a home."

  "I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun wasmine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards thatgot him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now andthen, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take himhunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards himtill school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia manforeman--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 atme again, he said: "Don't you get off any more truck about eldest sonand that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that Icare for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'dnot mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' seton--well--he didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, andI'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 moistover 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 timefor 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 hishand off my shoulder); "I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we metlast. 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 furtherattention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the HotelBrunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered "Supper!" with ashrill 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 oathsat my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words thesister'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 cashto stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So hissister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and savedtime 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 knowbetter 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's notright, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husbandwould like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap upagainst the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start hergently."

  "Death's different," said I.

  "Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and ashaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'dbeen just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like askunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quickas the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll bedown ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all thatcrowd 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 emptychairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontierthat divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itselfat a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he hadveered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eyeattempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after longweeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known hewas looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hattedproprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make ittender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper wasgoing forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces broodingand feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement thatsprings from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to thenative animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest'suneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepteduses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest MissBuckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean,knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of alady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached allin the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean'seye, 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, "useaxle-dope."

  The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preservethe decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. Butsternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmlessboy, 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 anoctave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could onlyshake her head at the plate.

  Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose fornone," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most todeath."

  "I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slickerrubbed 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-shopdid you escape from?"

  "Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head infrom 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 beneathhis chair. "Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!"And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others alsosilently dispersed.

  Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly intalk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was nowsmoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her abouthimself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for thecorrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean tothe lady.

  Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainlyceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just had tohave 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 Bucknerpealed 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 ofdeprecation, "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 anemotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But shecaught herself up, and said gayly to me, "And where's that house youwere 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 herpistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.

  This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went aglow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girlbehind it. "My!" he said, at length, almost in a whisper, "she's got thedrop 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." Andshe 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 starkrapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond,unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said withpride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professionaldrop 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 likeme ever hold that awful.45 Colt steady?"

  "She knows the brands, too!" cried Lin, in ecstasy. "See here," heremarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, "we're losing timeright now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for alady, and I'll bring her along."

  I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of theoffice. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment heldthe ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing,and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed tothe sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to acooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs,and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; soI helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurriedourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I wentout and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards awayskulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of thesomewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.

  As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, andon seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, "Did he know?"

  Lin hesitated.

  "You did know!" she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, andcontinued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, "I reckon you don'tlike 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 newsto tell you. You would not have given me any shock if you had said youknew about poor Nate, for that's the reason--Of course those thingscan't be secrets! Why, he's only twenty, sir! How should he know aboutthis world? He hadn't learned the first little thing when he lefthome five years ago. And I am twenty-three--old enough to be Nate'sgrandmother, he's that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realizebad 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 apardon signed by Governor Barker. "And the Governor has let me carryit to Nate myself. He won't know a thing about it till I tell him. TheGovernor was real kind, and we will never forget him. I reckon Nate musthave a mustache by now?" said she to Lin.

  "Yes," Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, "he has got amustache 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 askedLin, turning from me again, for Mr. McLean had not been losing time. Itwas plain that between these two had arisen a freemasonry from which Iwas already shut out. Her woman's heart had answered his right impulseto 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 befour--herself, Lin, myself, and the boy Billy." Was Billy the one atsupper? Oh no; just Billy Lusk, of Laramie. "He's a kid I'm taking upthe 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 willingLin should know her fatigue. Yet, fatigue and all, she would not sleepin the agent's room. At sight of it and the close quarters she drew backinto the outer office, so prompted by that inner, unsuspected strictnessshe had shown me before.

  "Come out!" she cried, laughing. "Indeed, I thank you. But I can't haveyou sleep on this hard floor out here. No politeness, now! Thank youever so much. I'm used to roughing it pretty near as well as if I was--acowboy!" And she glanced at Lin. "They're calling forty-seven," sheadded to the agent.

  "That's me," he said, coming out to the telegraph instrument. "So you'reone of us?"

  "I didn't know forty-seven meant Separ," said I. "How in the world doyou know that?"

  "I didn't. I heard forty-seven, forty-seven, forty-seven, start and goright along, so I guessed they wanted him, and he couldn't hear themfrom his room."

  "Can yu' do astronomy and Spanish too?" inquired the proud and smilingMcLean.

  "Why, it's nothing! I've been day operator back home. Why is a deputycoming through on a special engine?"

  "Please don't say it out loud!" quavered the agent, as the machineclicked its news.

  "Yu' needn't be scared of a girl," said Lin. "Another sheriff! Sothey're not quit bothering us yet."

  However, this meddling was not the company's, but the county's; asheriff 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 stationsbeyond, and the engine migh
t not stop at Separ, even to water. So herewas no molesting of Separ's liberties.

  "All the same," Lin said, for pistols now and then still sounded at thecorrals, "the boys'll not understand that till it's explained, and theymay act wayward first. I'd feel easier if you slept here," he urgedto the girl. But she would not. "Well, then, we must rustle some otherprivate place for you. How's the section-house?"

  "Rank," said the agent, "since those Italians used it. The pump engineerhas 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 itdoes take a decent girl to shock you." And while she stood laughingat him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant nooffence. "Why, to be sure you didn't!" said she. "But I do enjoy youreal thoroughly."

  "Well, m'm," protested the wincing cow-puncher, driven back toaddressing her as "ma'am," "we ain't used--"

  "Don't tangle yourself up worse, Mr. McLean. No more am I 'used.' I havenever slept in an empty in my life. And why is that? Just because I'venever had to. And there's the difference between you boys and us. You dolots of things you don't like, and tell us. And we put up with lots ofthings we don't like, but we never let you find out. I know you meantno offense," she continued, heartily, softening towards her crushedprotector, "because you're a gentleman. And lands! I'm not complainingabout 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 herwith a devoted, uneasy countenance, and frequently muttering "Shucks!"while the agent and I followed with a lamp, for the dark was come. Withour help she mounted into the first car, and then into the next, takingthe lamp. And while she scanned the floor and corners, and slid the doorback and forth, Lin whispered in my ear: "Her name's Jessamine. Shetold 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 beenmore apt.

  "Nobody seems to have slept in these," said she, stepping down; and onlearning that even the tramp avoided Separ when he could, she exclaimed,"What lodging could be handier than this! Only it would be so cute ifyou had a Louavull an' Nashvull car," said she. "Twould seem like my oldKentucky home!" And laughing rather sweetly at her joke, she heldthe lamp up to read the car's lettering. "'D. and R. G.' Oh, that'sa way-off stranger! I reckon they're all strange." She went along thetrain with her lamp. "Yes, 'B. and M.' and 'S. C. and P.' Oh, this isrich! Nate will laugh when he hears. I'll choose 'C., B. and Q.' That'sa 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--theirdoings--with a sort of unchanging homesickness. Nothing like them canever happen again, I know; for it's all gone--settled, sobered, andgone. 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 intime for!

  To arrange some sort of bed for her was the next thing, and we made agood shake-down--clean straw and blankets and a pillow, and the agentwould have brought sheets; but though she would not have these, she didnot 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 allmeans, if it pleased him to think he could watch over her safety betterso; and she shut herself in, bidding us good-night. We began spreadingstraw 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 thesheriff can tell the boys he's not after them."

  "That'll convince 'em he is," said Lin. "Stop him here, or let him gothrough."

  But we were not to steer the course that events took now. The railsof the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as theheadlight grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings atthe corrals chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of thecoming engine heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and metand mixed with the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds approachedtogether 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 couldsee the agent running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signalwith as much coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very shortspace for wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowedsuddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded theplace. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and luggingagainst their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dustcoiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across theglare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clusteredaround it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deepbreaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I cameout in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprisingshouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised bythe horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could soprecipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could onlylook when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on theengine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were makingboisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous norjoking, was going to the cab from my side, with his pistol drawn, tokeep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on the lever, thefireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and descendedand crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a good-naturedeye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his errand, whensome rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to get downand have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he named thesheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and the newyell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations, theyswarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on thestep. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and inthis silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, andthey all looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For thereon the threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behindher, and touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood JessamineBuckner.

  "Will you gentlemen do me a favor?" said she. "Strangers, maybe, haveno right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. ForI'm real sleepy!" She smiled as she brought this out. "I've been fourdays 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 wantboys to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off tillto-morrow night?"

  In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy amongthem, and that some word was passing through their groups. After thebrief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on theirhorses, while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and thesheriff and engineer remained as they were.

  "Good-night, lady," said a voice among the moving horsemen, but theothers kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filedaway to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathernchaps, passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of lightin front of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here andthere a faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departingcolumn a bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in thedoorway, and then was gone again into the dimness.

  The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking thatshe should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the enginemoved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With anexclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and,with all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquelyas 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 hedoes it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us thatway again if he lets you off?" she asked Billy.

  "No," said Billy, looking at her with interest. "Father 'd have cowhidedme anyway, I guess," he added, meditatively.

  "Do you call him father?"

  "Ah, father's at Laramie," said Billy, with disgust. "He'd not stop foryour 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 aride together. Pleasant dreams!"

  She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy consideredit, 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, whotook him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. Onedistant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We leftour 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 hisstockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and thenleaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay inexpectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as heslid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texasboy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention thankeeping a watch on it. "So I gave him to understand," said Lin, "that Ihad no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but thatI guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier forhis system." After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in thenight, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning fromLin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to joinhis outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usuallygood-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown,unthanked young sentinel. "Sleeping's a heap better for them kind tillthey get their growth," was his single observation.

  But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stageI told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a notethat young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might seehim 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 thatwhen she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable anduntiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her inat the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed thehours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.

  But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself besideher to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to beholdher.

  Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had stillfurther refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his lookso winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor birdoverhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremelydoubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, doesnot prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon manand woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at hiswatch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, shesmiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancingswiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.

  And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hotsun 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 takea 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 Iinstructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheldthat his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin mether on Bear Creek.

  The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used tohave a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a womancan 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'dhad a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed andI 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 Bertwouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and hecome round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, andhe 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 manyare, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seenmother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Linever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and ifhe does," said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, "I'll quit him andskip."

  "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, scantymanner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, nowspoke 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 understandingas to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instantwar! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about hisrelation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening tothe facts of his mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoingcynic, "folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in thiscountry!" But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the nextstation carefully lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too,"he whispered to me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. Welaughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused,as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy sleptsound between us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh outof that don't make soberness for somebody."

  Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk hadquieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine atour next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she didnot hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.

  Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her bravebrightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from hereyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheekswhite and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding methat 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 heartunderstood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cowpuncher, standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfullyand spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombreemotion; 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 bestared at going up those steps;
it must be all alone, the pain and thejoy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silentsteps 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 likePowder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell andtell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, andhow she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and madeher sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn itinto money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd havejust bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!" Lin broughtup 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 givenup tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how herlong-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knowshe's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary andstarts 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 hadto go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of themoney he stole." We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stoneinto the quick little river. "She's awful strict in some ways. ThoughtBuffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday.Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce ismostly 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 themountains. "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 dowith it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I canbe 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 spendingto speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin andfinish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creekbetter 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, ofcourse, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered hissubstance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had henot married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But Istopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.

  And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in mymind.

  "No," he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, "don't you ask aboutthe things you're meaning." Then his face grew radiant and ratherstern. "Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that somebygones can't ever be bygones? But if you," he said, "never come to lookaway up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same asif you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the wholebusiness!"

  When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with theblossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet takingvagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped withsince through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It isnot true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that allplants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seenmisery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost thesaddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well theordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibilityhad been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would havebeen much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, andthis care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. "Lin," saidI, "I will drink your health and luck."

  "I'm healthy enough," said he; and we came back to the main street andinto the main saloon.

  "How d'ye, boys?" said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. "It's on meto-day," he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he wasa little drunk. "I'm setting 'em up," he continued. "Why? Why,because"--he looked around for appreciation--"because it's not everyson-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'llhave a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of PowderRiver!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinkshe knows how to break a colt," he shouted, looking around with theirrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly inlaughter 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 leftthe 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 tolike 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'scompany, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, shetold us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he mustget back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waitingfor him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handletheir young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with aMrs. 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 heron this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilfulcheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post anddress 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 mannerto 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, andhe kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's suchoncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. Iexpect she must have some of her savings left."

  It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and asour ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder ifher joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road toRiverside 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 thatdead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressedsome regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention tovisit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though hespoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle ofbrother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he heldhimself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and thenmerely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of NateBuckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sisterwas all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many sparedcriminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailingloudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister satclose and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world tosee. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back fromsome gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemedmore and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.

  At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sundraws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a streamcomes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spre
ad green alongthe margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening thatwe saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils oflight. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its sternmasonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet andamber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet aboutthe levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These thebrother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and Iheard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Hadhe been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage anddashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employmentthan he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking ahorse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. "Do you rememberwhen I used to hold the pony for you to get on?" she said. "You alwayswould scare me, Nate!" And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she seethat horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, andshe would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had beenabsent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin,where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he wasright, 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 onlywas their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness boldriding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken forcordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it hadbeen in the Buffalo saloon.

  "The trick is easy enough," said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, andliking an audience. "You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore likethis--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on asudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up bythe mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quittheir 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 andknowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, andbolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, whenthe rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jaggedswerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on itsfeet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in thesaddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely,and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noiseto silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burdentowards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, untilthe head sank on the horse's rump.

  "Come away," said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyedand 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 horsehad crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantlyunconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught inthe hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of thisworld that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any takinghim home, which his sister at first wished to do. "Why, I came here tobring him home," she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness inwax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (andshe was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; shesaw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It wasLin 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 aboutthe burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what wassaid to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came fromsome mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let hertell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with thesame authority of that first "come away"; "Now you've had enough ofthe talking. Come for a walk." Enough of the talking--as if it werea treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, againobeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows andalong the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one onlypoint did the cow-puncher consult me.

  "They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound," said he. "Butshe has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, andwhere she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look athim 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 firstsight 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 faras Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hourto hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight andsheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Natelaid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on thosewalks.

  But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupiedwith 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 couldnot have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must bedebating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I didso. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon tobe made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morninghe and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoinedJessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here onBear 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 whomyour speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, itfroze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald businessdiction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among mychoicest correspondence; this one, especially:

  "Wensday four a. m.

  "DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on importantbisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. Youwill confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Bucknerof date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as MissJ. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and pooraccommodations.

  "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 giveherself to a lover was distasteful to me.

  But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, andshe was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first franksurprise at learning of his departure, his name did not come again fromher lips, at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day asto her opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something fromthem.

  "Let us talk straight," said I. "Do you mean that Miss Buckner saysthat, or that you say it?"

  "Why, the poor thing says nothing!" exclaimed the lady. "It's like a manto think she would. And I'll not say anything, either, for you're alljust the same, except when you're worse; and that Lin McLean is going toknow what I think of him next time we meet."

  He did. On that occasion the kind old dame told him he was the best boyin the country, and stood on her toes and kissed him. But meanwhile wedid not know why he had gone, and Jessamine (though he was never subtleor cruel enough to plan such a thing) missed him, and thus in herloneliness had the chance to learn how much he had been to her.

  Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitableroof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook inthe hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clungto the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going whenI told her of my own journey back to th
e railroad. In Buffalo she walkedto the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of onelife-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched thereceding town and mountains. "It's awful to be leaving him!" she said."Excuse me for acting so in front of you." With the poignant emptinessovercoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting inIllinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, hemust have gone with her.

  How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could havecome 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 eyeshad no interest in them. "He never knew pain," I pursued, "and he dieddoing the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoyinghimself, and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talkreligion, but I can't."

  "Yes," she answered, "I can think of him so glad to be free. Thank youfor saying that about religion. Do you think it's wicked not to wantit--to hate it sometimes? I hope it's not. Thank you, truly."

  During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she saidwas wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, thewounds of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no highersensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness alreadyheld. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentuckynotions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cagecalled Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers.Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice thatwas in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreementsbrought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But whenat last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and atthe suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but steppedout of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushedand 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 specialobligation 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'tmean it."

  "Neighbor!" he exclaimed; and again, "Neighbor," much pleased. "Now itwould 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'regoing to understand me sure quick!" He rushed inside the station, spokesharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation thathad pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemednear 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 tookit from the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. "Youneedn'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 aChristmas parcel he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefullyuntie. "Open it," he urged again. "Keeping me waiting this way!"

  "What in the world does all this mean?" cried Jessamine, stopping shortat 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 MissBuckner might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If shewas willing to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on herway east, and talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were morethan she had been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, shecould continue east with the loss of only a day. The superintendentbelieved the salary could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please tofind an order for a free ride to Edgeford.

  Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. "You did do this," sherepeated, 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, andstopped. "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 youare 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 anhour, 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, againlaughing, sunny and defiant.

  "You bet you are!" said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go intothe station serenely. "You can't get used to new ideas in a minute," heremarked 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. 'Whenshe goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'llyou do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Justknew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turrubleinconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--buthow could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with someBlue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in tillthat morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's afterMiss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man whotalked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rivalyourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival wouldfind life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke intwo halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, isgoin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante inthe freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for theyall asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes afterwriting you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out onthat ride!" (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) "Got to Separ. Gotthe sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held upthe locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk tothe superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl incharge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. ButTubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent.'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his twohands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up anddown. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay rightalong, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle andyour 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'tdo much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would berespected there, and the only question was if she could conduct thebusiness. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began tosoak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wiseas 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 likethat! 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 herparcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examinationof check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainlyfailed to gratify her.

  Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for moredissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leavesomething vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn duringsupper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, "I hope I shallsee Mr. Donohoe
."

  "Texas?" said Lin. "I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up atthe 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 outJessamine "Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why,Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can'tremember!"

  "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, maybeeven 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 foundhim waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to saygood-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling andrepeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she saidthe butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into thetreble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but shemade herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.

  "Don't you ride any more cow-catchers," she warned Billy Lusk, "or I'llhave to come back and look after you."

  "You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't," shoutedthe long-memoried nine-year-old. "You will," murmured Mr. McLean,oracularly.

  As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Bucknercried "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 hisintention all along.

  "Is that marriage again?" said Billy, anxiously. "He wouldn't tell menothing."

  "He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford," said the agent. "Beback to-morrow."

  "Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along," Billy complained. AndSepar laughed.

  But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossipremarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trainsmade their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaringbulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleepwas 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 awhile. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to besifted 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, butthe Eastern States.

  "It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and usedto 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 Virginiansuggested.

  "That's you!" said Honey. "Schemin' mischief away ahead. You'rethe leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear afaithful-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 heartywelcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean.He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highlycasual.

  "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 theVirginian.

  "Sure!" said Mr. McLean. "I quit at Edgeford."

  He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; andbeing asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tuberclehad 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 fromits lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, "You'll see herto-morrow if you go in with the outfit." Then, looking round tomake 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 nightwhen Jessamine had taken his heart captive.

  "My idea," he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. "Seethis, 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 acceptthe superintendent's proposition." Here Lin fired his small exchangedweapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. "She can beat that with mine!" heexclaimed, 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 theyhad practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them ina book as if they were pressed flowers. "They won't get crumpled thatway," said he; and he further showed me a tintype. "She's got the otherat Separ," he finished.

  I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, hedeserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his handagain. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, somework, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well asKentucky. "But how in the world," I asked him, "did you persuade her tostop over at Edgeford at all?"

  "Yu' mustn't forget," said the lover (and he blushed), "that I had herfour hours alone on the train."

  But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their nextday's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he wasso 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 wasa joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon theVirginian, 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 changeat 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 harmlessnessof the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes oflegend--more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting andno serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed andcopious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappearlike rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out orin there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building andleaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent doorstood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin trampedin foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stoppedrooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feelingup for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees hisgrin 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 theopen door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed towelcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet ofSepar; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place,and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulgingwater-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.

  The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways atitself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, andremoved its foolish hat.

  "Good-morning, gentlemen," said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind herrailing; 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 officewas seventy miles from here.

  "Any for the C. Y.?" muttered another, likewise knowing bette
r.

  It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for themail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, whichsome did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out noletters ever came for these names!

  There was no letter for any one present.

  "I'm sorry, truly," said Jessamine behind the railing. "For you seemedreal anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes,please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understandthings 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. "Ohdear, no." He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. "You Lin McLean," saidhe, in his gentle voice, "you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through thismawnin'."

  Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quitesmall across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenlyand 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 knowledgeof his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynxobserver, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean "'Neighbor' is as cute a namefor a six-shooter as ever I heard," said he. "But she'll never have needof your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while shehearkens 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 manwill 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 betterthis second trip."

  "Mrs. Lusk don't count," said I.

  "I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got herclamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky." And the Virginianfell silent again.

  Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elderthat was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing hisidea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but agood shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort ofpossession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. Theywould have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with thewater-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see oneor 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 anace of clubs. "I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for ashootin'-match," he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no moreobjectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents ofgame--antelope, sage-chickens--but, shyness intervening, he left themoutside the door, and entering, dressed in all the "Sunday" that he had,would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emergingfrom one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of histormentors.

  "If she don't notice your clothes, Texas," said the Virginian, "justmention them to her."

  "Now yer've done offended her," shrilled Manassas Donohoe. "She heardthat."

  "She'll hear you singin' sooprano," said Honey Wiggin. "It's good thiscountry has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall andcorrupt your morals."

  "You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man," observed theVirginian. "Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass."

  But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas hefound immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with noone. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; hehad gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. Butmore than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-byeto Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her awolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. "She can have it," he told me. "I likeher." Then he stole a look at his guardian. "If they get married andsend me back to mother," said he, "I'll run away sure." So school andthis old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky,who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to hishearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wantedchickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seenat his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing themwith equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.

  "This time right!" he exclaimed. "And I want her to know Billy some morebefore 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' iscloser 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'regood, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask herabout Laramie."

  Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horsesangrily to the corral.

  Lin nudged me, laughing. "I can rile him every time about Laramie," saidhe, affectionately. "I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much storeby me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. Whatdo yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--rightafter Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says tome one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about herbrother and her sorrow." Lin paused. "And about me. I can't never tellyou--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about mepicking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him becausehis own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine allthat; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn'tanything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he wasyour son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss sheever gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God blessher!"

  As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: "Ididn't ask her about Laramie. So there!"

  "Well, well, kid," said the cow-puncher, patting his head, "yu' needn'tto, I guess."

  But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attentionto the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when wewent 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 darkdress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silentlyon one.

  "Scanty room for company!" Jessamine said. "But we must make out thisway--till we have another way." She smiled on Lin, and Billy's facedarkened. "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 laughedtogether.

  "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. "Whosays 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 tellme, 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. Andyou'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," statedBilly, 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 andlooking 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 threeyears ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't comeeasy to tell."

  I rose. "Miss Buckner," said I, "he will tell you. But he will not tellyou 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 onLin, and her face remained white.

  I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed tothe hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blanketsto sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhileI 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 couldhave told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what hadit to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet withsomething left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watchedthe 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 ofthe sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant andnear things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted windowwere in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rosethe water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me aSphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon Iheard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me hewalked 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'msorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She justsat, 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 theplain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon youngBilly fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was hewho 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 himand stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close thedoor, 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 himgently. "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 thesaddles on." As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. "She isin there," he said. "She's in there. So near." He looked, and turned tothe 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, shedon'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, andshe forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how Ididn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, andshe 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 solong--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 bedifferent to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see herview; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, andthat 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. "Butperhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--"

  "No," said the cow-puncher. "Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking ofsomething back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took itin that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch andthe chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came andwaked 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'llwait 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 thehorses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from itsblack, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, intothe moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together inthe clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that shewas weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her wholeloving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in herwould not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood whileBilly and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down againand folded her in his arms.

  "Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!" she sobbed. She could not withhold thislast 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 themwere lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, brightmoon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine'swindow still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black,standing over Separ.

  DESTINY AT DRYBONE

 

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