Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

“No,” said Billy, looking at her with interest. “Father 'd have cowhided me anyway, I guess,” he added, meditatively.

“Do you call him father?”

“Ah, father's at Laramie,” said Billy, with disgust. “He'd not stop for your asking. Lin don't bother me much.”

“You quit talking and step up there!” ordered his guardian. “Well, m'm, I guess yu' can sleep good now in there.”

“If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it! Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.--”

“I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin.”

“I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride together. Pleasant dreams!”

She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered it, remarking: “I like her. What makes her live in a car?”

But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off, when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping a watch on it. “So I gave him to understand,” said Lin, “that I had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for his system.” After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown, unthanked young sentinel. “Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till they get their growth,” was his single observation.

But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see him upon her return, to thank him.

“Any Jack can walk around all night,” said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.

“Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,” observed the young lady.

This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.

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

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

And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.

“I know this road,” piped Billy, on the box

“'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains.”

So I inquired what game he had then shot.

“Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know. What made Lin marry mother when father was around?”

The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met her on Bear Creek.

The formidable nine-year-old pondered. “The geography says they used to have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can have a lot of husbands?”

“It don't especially depend on the place,” remarked the driver to me.

“Because,” Billy went on, “Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?”

“No, Billy, you're not,” I said.

“Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother! I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go. You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he does,” said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, “I'll quit him and skip.”

“No danger, Bill,” said I.

“How would the nice lady inside please you?” inquired the driver.

“Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!” sang out Billy, loud and scornful. “She's after her brother. She's all right, though,” he added, approvingly.

At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.

Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills? That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his mother's life! “Though,” said the driver, an easygoing cynic, “folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!” But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully lifted him down and up. “I've knowed that woman, too,” he whispered to me. “Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think,” he mused, as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between us, “there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't make soberness for somebody.”

Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our next change of horses “hoped” I would come inside, I knew she did not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.

Journeying done, her face revealed the strain beneath her brave brightness, and the haunting care she could no longer keep from her eyes. The imminence of the jail and the meeting had made her cheeks white and her countenance seem actually smaller; and when, reminding me that we should meet again soon, she gave me her hand, it was ice-cold. I think she was afraid Lin might offer to go with her. But his heart understood the lonely sacredness of her next half-hour, and the cow puncher, standing aside for her to pass, lifted his hat wistfully and spoke never a word. For a moment he looked after her with sombre emotion; but the court-house and prison stood near and in sight, and, as plain as if he had said so, I saw him suddenly feel she should not be stared at going up those steps; it must be all alone, the pain and the joy of that reprieve! He turned away with me, and after a few silent steps said, “Wasted! all wasted!”

“Let us hope--” I began.

“You're not a fool,” he broke in, roughly. “You don't hope anything.”

“He'll start life elsewhere,” said I.

“Elsewhere! Yes, keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like Powder River knows him. But she! I have had to sit and hear her tell and tell about him; all about back in Kentucky playin' around the farm, and how she raised him after the old folks died. Then he got bigger and made her sell their farm, and she told how it was right he should turn it into money and get his half. I did not dare say a word, for she'd have just bit my head off, and--and that would sure hurt me now!” Lin brought up with a comical chuckle. “And she went to work, and he cleared out, and no more seen or heard of him. That's for five years, and she'd given up tracing him, when one morning she reads in the paper about how her long-lost brother is convicted for forgery. That's the way she knows he's not dead, and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts for him. She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo, New York, till she got in the cars and read the paper over again. But she had to go as far as Cincinnati, either way. She has paid every cent of the money he stole.” We had come to the bridge, and Lin jerked a stone into the quick little river. “She's awful strict in some ways. Thought Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein' open Sunday. Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness! And she thinks divorce is mostly sin. But her heart is a shield for Nate.”

“Her face is as beautiful as her actions,” he added.

“Well,” said I, “and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?”

He whirled round and took both my shoulders. “Come walking!” he urged. “I must talk some.” So we followed the stream out of town towards the mountains. “I came awful near asking her in the stage,” said he.

“Goodness, Lin! give yourself time!”

“Time can't increase my feelings.”

“Hers, man, hers! How many hours have you known her?”

“Hours and hours! You're talking foolishness! What have they got to do with it? And she will listen to me. I can tell she will. I know I can be so she'll listen, and it will go all right, for I'll ask so hard. And everything'll come out straight. Yu' see, I've not been spending to speak of since Billy's on my hands, and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better than Shawhan. She's the first I've ever loved.”

“Then I'd like to ask--” I cried out.

“Ask away!” he exclaimed, inattentively, in his enthusiasm.

“When you--” but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of course, not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his substance, but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not married once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped, for to trench here was not for me or any one.

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

“No,” he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, “don't you ask about the things you're meaning.” Then his face grew radiant and rather stern. “Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones can't ever be bygones? But if you,” he said, “never come to look away up to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you did deserve her, why, you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!”

When we walked in silence for a long while, he lighted again with the blossoming dawn of his sentiment. I thought of the coarse yet taking vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon, and hunted and camped with since through the years. Decidedly he was not that boy to-day! It is not true that all of us rise through adversity, any more than that all plants need shadow. Some starve out of the sunshine; and I have seen misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the saddest sight in the world! But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of happiness, and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been needed to ripen the spirit. Yes, Jessamine Buckner would have been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage, and this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself. “Lin,” said I, “I will drink your health and luck.”

“I'm healthy enough,” said he; and we came back to the main street and into the main saloon.

“How d'ye, boys?” said some one, and there was Nate Buckner. “It's on me to-day,” he continued, shoving whiskey along the bar; and I saw he was a little drunk. “I'm setting 'em up,” he continued. “Why? Why, because”--he looked around for appreciation--“because it's not every son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker. I'm important, I want you to understand,” he pursued to the cold bystanders. “They'll have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper. 'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!' They can't do without me! If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a colt,” he shouted, looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in his mind. “You're not drinking, Lin,” said he.

“No,” said McLean, “I'm not.”

“Sworn off again? Well, water never did agree with me.”

“Yu' never gave water the chance,” retorted the cow-puncher, and we left the place without my having drunk his health.

It was a grim beginning, this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down, with the jail door scarce closed behind him. “Folks are not going to like that,” said Lin, as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel. Yet the sister, left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's company, would pretend it was a matter of course. Nate was not in, she told us at once. He had business to attend to and friends to see he must get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting for him. He was the only one the E. K. outfit would allow to handle their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working. All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, shaven clean, with good clothes, and well conducted. His tone and manner to Jessamine were confidential and caressing, and offended Mr. McLean, so that I observed to him that it was scarcely reasonable to be jealous.

“Oh, no jealousy!” said he. “But he comes in and kisses her, and he kisses her good-night, and us strangers looking on! It's such oncontrollable affection, yu' see, after never writing for five years. I expect she must have some of her savings left.”

It is true that the sister gave the brother money more than once; and as our ways lay together, I had chances to see them both, and to wonder if her joy at being with him once again was going to last. On the road to Riverside I certainly heard Jessamine beg him to return home with her; and he ridiculed such a notion. What proper life for a live man was that dead place back East? he asked her. I thought he might have expressed some regret that they must dwell so far apart, or some intention to visit her now and then; but he said nothing of the sort, though he spoke volubly of himself and his prospects. I suppose this spectacle of brother and sister had rubbed Lin the wrong way too much, for he held himself and Billy aloof, joining me on the road but once, and then merely to give me the news that people here wanted no more of Nate Buckner; he would be run out of the country, and respect for the sister was all that meanwhile saved him. But Buckner, like so many spared criminals, seemed brazenly unaware he was disgraced, and went hailing loudly any riders or drivers we met, while beside him his sister sat close and straight, her stanch affection and support for the world to see. For all she let appear, she might have been bringing him back from some gallant heroism achieved; and as I rode along the travesty seemed more and more pitiful, the outcome darker and darker.

At all times is Riverside beautiful, but most beautiful when the sun draws down through the openings of the hills. From each one a stream comes flowing clearly out into the plain, and fields spread green along the margins. It was beneath the long-slanted radiance of evening that we saw Blue Creek and felt its coolness rise among the shifting veils of light. The red bluff eastward, the tall natural fortress, lost its stern masonry of shapes, and loomed a soft towering enchantment of violet and amber and saffron in the changing rays. The cattle stood quiet about the levels, and horses were moving among the restless colts. These the brother bade his sister look at, for with them was his glory; and I heard him boasting of his skill--truthful boasting, to be sure. Had he been honest in his dealings, the good-will that man's courage and dashing appearance beget in men would have brought him more employment than he could have undertaken. He told Jessamine his way of breaking a horse that few would dare, and she listened eagerly. “Do you remember when I used to hold the pony for you to get on?” she said. “You always would scare me, Nate!” And he replied, fluently, Yes, yes; did she see that horse there, near the fence? He was a four-year-old, an outlaw, and she would find no one had tried getting on his back since he had been absent. This was the first question he asked on reaching the cabin, where various neighbors were waiting the mail-rider; and, finding he was right, he turned in pride to Jessamine.

“They don't know how to handle that horse,” said he. “I told you so. Give me a rope.”

Did she notice the cold greeting Nate received? I think not. Not only was their welcome to her the kinder, but any one is glad to witness bold riding, and this chance made a stir which the sister may have taken for cordiality. But Lin gave me a look; for it was the same here as it had been in the Buffalo saloon.

“The trick is easy enough,” said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and liking an audience. “You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like this--Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their fooling after one or two doses. Now watch your outlaw!”

He went into the saddle so swift and secure that the animal, amazed, trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something awful and nameless came over us and chilled our noise to silence. The horse, dazed and tamed by the fall, brought its burden towards us, a wobbling thing, falling by small shakes backward, until the head sank on the horse's rump.

“Come away,” said Lin McLean to Jessamine and at his voice she obeyed and went, leaning on his arm.

Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards, having spoken and known nothing. The whole weight of the horse had crushed him internally. He must have become almost instantly unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world that he knew. The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him home, which his sister at first wished to do. “Why, I came here to bring him home,” she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax. Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it. It was Lin gave her what she needed--the repose of his strong, silent presence. He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell her story as she would. Once I heard him say to her, with the same authority of that first “come away”; “Now you've had enough of the talking. Come for a walk.” Enough of the talking--as if it were a treatment! How did he think of that? Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and along the curving brook; and that night she slept well. On one only point did the cow-puncher consult me.

“They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,” said he. “But she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where she wants him to be alongside of them. I've not let her look at him to-day, for--well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory. But I'd like to show you my idea before going further.”

Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first sight of it.

“That's all I wanted to know,” said he. “I'll fix the rest.”

I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far as Kentucky. I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate laid, and there she went to sit, alone. Lin did not go with her on those walks.

But now something new was on the fellow's mind. He was plainly occupied with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work. On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in Wyoming? Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so. My advice to him would have been ill received, and--as was soon to be made plain--would have done his delicacy injustice. Next, one morning he and Billy were gone. My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce's, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.

But stuck in my hat-band I found a pencilled farewell.

Now Mr. McLean constructed perhaps three letters in the year--painful, serious events--like an interview with some important person with whom your speech must decorously flow. No matter to whom he was writing, it froze all nature stiff in each word he achieved; and his bald business diction and wild archaic penmanship made documents that I value among my choicest correspondence; this one, especially:

“Wensday four a. m.

“DEAR SIR this is to Inform you that i have gone to Separ on important bisness where i expect to meet you on your arrival at same point. You will confer a favor and oblidge undersigned by Informing Miss J. Buckner of date (if soon) you fix for returning per stage to Separ as Miss J. Buckner may prefer company for the trip being long and poor accommodations.

“Yours &c. L. McLEAN.”

This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound) that this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give herself to a lover was distasteful to me.

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

“Let us talk straight,” said I. “Do you mean that Miss Buckner says that, or that you say it?”

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

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

Though pressed to stay indefinitely beneath Mrs. Pierce's hospitable roof, the girl, after lingering awhile, and going often to that nook in the hill by Riverside, took her departure. She was restless, yet clung to the neighborhood. It was with a wrench that she fixed her going when I told her of my own journey back to the railroad. In Buffalo she walked to the court-house and stood a moment as if bidding this site of one life-memory farewell, and from the stage she watched and watched the receding town and mountains. “It's awful to be leaving him!” she said. “Excuse me for acting so in front of you.” With the poignant emptiness overcoming her in new guise, she blamed herself for not waiting in Illinois until he had been sent to Joliet, for then, so near home, he must have gone with her.

How could I tell her that Nate's death was the best end that could have come to him? But I said: “You know you don't think it was your fault. You know you would do the same again.” She listened to me, but her eyes had no interest in them. “He never knew pain,” I pursued, “and he died doing the thing he liked best in the world. He was happy and enjoying himself, and you gave him that. It's bad only for you. Some would talk religion, but I can't.”

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

During our journey she summoned her cheerfulness, and all that she said was wholesome. In the robust, coarse soundness of her fibre, the wounds of grief would heal and leave no sickness--perhaps no higher sensitiveness to human sufferings than her broad native kindness already held. We touched upon religion again, and my views shocked her Kentucky notions, for I told her Kentucky locked its religion in an iron cage called Sunday, which made it very savage and fond of biting strangers. Now and again I would run upon that vein of deep-seated prejudice that was in her character like some fine wire. In short, our disagreements brought us to terms more familiar than we had reached hitherto. But when at last Separ came, where was I? There stood Mr. McLean waiting, and at the suddenness of him she had no time to remember herself, but stepped out of the stage with such a smile that the ardent cow-puncher flushed and beamed.

“So I went away without telling you goodbye!” he began, not wisely. “Mrs. Pierce has been circulating war talk about me, you bet!”

The maiden in Jessamine spoke instantly. “Indeed? There was no special obligation for you to call on me, or her to notice if you didn't.”

“Oh!” said Lin, crestfallen. “Yu' sure don't mean that?”

She looked at him, and was compelled to melt. “No, neighbor, I don't mean it.”

“Neighbor!” he exclaimed; and again, “Neighbor,” much pleased. “Now it would sound kind o' pleasant if you'd call me that for a steady thing.”

“It would sound kind of odd, Mr. McLean, thank you.”

“Blamed if I understand her,” cried Lin. “Blamed if I do. But you're going to understand me sure quick!” He rushed inside the station, spoke sharply to the agent, and returned in the same tremor of elation that had pushed him to forwardness with his girl, and with which he seemed near bursting. “I've been here three days to meet you. There's a letter, and I expect I know what's in it. Tubercle has got it here.” He took it from the less hasty agent and thrust it in Jessamine's hand. “You needn't to fear. Please open it; it's good news this time, you bet!” He watched it in her hand as the boy of eight watches the string of a Christmas parcel he wishes his father would cut instead of so carefully untie. “Open it,” he urged again. “Keeping me waiting this way!”

“What in the world does all this mean?” cried Jessamine, stopping short at the first sentence.

“Read,” said Lin.

“You've done this!” she exclaimed.

“Read, read!”

So she read, with big eyes. It was an official letter of the railroad, written by the division superintendent at Edgeford. It hoped Miss Buckner might feel like taking the position of agent at Separ. If she was willing to consider this, would she stop over at Edgeford, on her way east, and talk with the superintendent? In case the duties were more than she had been accustomed to on the Louisville and Nashville, she could continue east with the loss of only a day. The superintendent believed the salary could be arranged satisfactorily. Enclosed please to find an order for a free ride to Edgeford.

Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. “You did do this,” she repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.

“Yes,” said he. “And I am plumb proud of it.”

She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and stopped. “Did anybody ever!” she said.

“We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see,” said the cow-puncher.

“Oh no! oh no!” Jessamine declared. “Though how am I ever to thank you?”

“By not argufying,” Lin answered.

“Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you are crazy.”

“I've been waiting to hear yu' say that,” said the complacent McLean. “I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it.”

“And I expect I'll go, too,” said the girl.

“I'll be plumb proud to have yu',” the cow-puncher assented.

“I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now,” said Jessamine, again laughing, sunny and defiant.

“You bet you are!” said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into the station serenely. “You can't get used to new ideas in a minute,” he remarked to me. “I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,” he broke out, impetuously, “I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble inconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on that ride!” (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) “Got to Separ. Got the sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would be respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct the business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began to soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wise as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her.”

“Well,” said I, “you deserve success after thinking of a thing like that! You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago. By eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent.”

“Why, so she will!” said Lin, affecting surprise.

He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly failed to gratify her.

Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, “I hope I shall see Mr. Donohoe.”

“Texas?” said Lin. “I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet.”

“He can walk round a freight-car all night,” said Miss Buckner, stoutly. “I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me.”

Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate

“Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!” cried out Jessamine “Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!”

“Shucks!” began Lin.

But her laughter routed him. “Maybe you didn't notice you were young,” she said. “But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe even the girls kind o' did!”

“She's hard to beat, ain't she?” inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.

In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.

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

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

As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner cried “Jump!”

“Too late,” said he, placidly. Then he called to me, “I'm hard to beat, too!” So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his intention all along.

“Is that marriage again?” said Billy, anxiously. “He wouldn't tell me nothing.”

“He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford,” said the agent. “Be back to-morrow.”

“Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along,” Billy complained. And Separ laughed.

But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep was unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town. Separ lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a while. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be sifted through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.

That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but the Eastern States.

“It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used to us,” said the Virginian.

“We can't tell him good-bye,” said Honey Wiggin. “Separ'll be slow.”

“We can give his successor a right hearty welcome,” the Virginian suggested.

“That's you!” said Honey. “Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're the leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm.”

“Yes,” drawled the Southerner, “that's what I'm aiming to do.”

So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean. He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly casual.

“Bring your new wife?” they inquired.

“No; she preferred Kentucky,” Lin said.

“Bring the old one?”

“No; she preferred Laramie.”

“Kentucky's a right smart way to chase after a girl,” said the Virginian.

“Sure!” said Mr. McLean. “I quit at Edgeford.”

He met their few remarks so smoothly that they got no joy from him; and being asked had he seen the new agent, he answered yes, that Tubercle had gone Wednesday, and his successor did not seem to be much of a man.

But to me Lin had nothing to say until noon camp was scattering from its lunch to work, when he passed close, and whispered, “You'll see her to-morrow if you go in with the outfit.” Then, looking round to make sure we were alone in the sage-brush, he drew from his pocket, cherishingly, a little shining pistol. “Hers,” said he, simply.

I looked at him.

“We've exchanged,” he said.

He turned the token in his hand, caressing it as on that first night when Jessamine had taken his heart captive.

“My idea,” he added, unable to lift his eyes from the treasure. “See this, too.”

I looked, and there was the word “Neighbor” engraved on it.

“Her idea,” said he.

“A good one!” I murmured.

“It's on both, yu' know. We had it put on the day she settled to accept the superintendent's proposition.” Here Lin fired his small exchanged weapon at a cotton-wood, striking low. “She can beat that with mine!” he exclaimed, proud and tender. “She took four days deciding at Edgeford, and I learned her to hit the ace of clubs.” He showed me the cards they had practiced upon during those four days of indecision; he had them in a book as if they were pressed flowers. “They won't get crumpled that way,” said he; and he further showed me a tintype. “She's got the other at Separ,” he finished.

I shook his hand with all my might. Yes, he was worthy of her! Yes, he deserved this smooth course his love was running! And I shook his hand again. To tonic her grief Jessamine had longed for some activity, some work, and he had shown her Wyoming might hold this for her as well as Kentucky. “But how in the world,” I asked him, “did you persuade her to stop over at Edgeford at all?”

“Yu' mustn't forget,” said the lover (and he blushed), “that I had her four hours alone on the train.”

But his face that evening round the fire, when they talked of their next day's welcome to the new agent, became comedy of the highest, and he was so desperately canny in the moments he chose for silence or for comment! He had not been sure of their ignorance until he arrived, and it was a joke with him too deep for laughter. He had a special eye upon the Virginian, his mate in such a tale of mischiefs, and now he led him on. He suggested to the Southerner that caution might be wise; this change at Separ was perhaps some new trick of the company's.

“We mostly take their tricks,” observed the Virginian.

“Yes,” said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, “that's so, too.”

Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of legend--more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and no serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like rabbits--all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and leaped to earth--except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling up for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: “Why, excuse me, ma'am! Good-morning.”

There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place, and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging water-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.

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

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.

“If you have any letters, ma'am,” said the Virginian, more inventive, “I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's.” He knew the judge's office was seventy miles from here.

“Any for the C. Y.?” muttered another, likewise knowing better.

It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no letters ever came for these names!

There was no letter for any one present.

“I'm sorry, truly,” said Jessamine behind the railing. “For you seemed real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes, please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand things yet.”

“Yes, m'm.”

“Good-day, m'm.”

“Thank yu', m'm.”

They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.

“No, she don't understand things yet,” soliloquized the Virginian. “Oh dear, no.” He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. “You Lin McLean,” said he, in his gentle voice, “you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this mawnin'.”

Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.

Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean “'Neighbor' is as cute a name for a six-shooter as ever I heard,” said he. “But she'll never have need of your gun in Separ--only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she hearkens to your courtin'.”

That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. “Plumb strange,” he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, “how a man will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.”

“Your hair seems black as ever,” said I.

“My hopes ain't so glossy any more,” he answered. “Lin has done better this second trip.”

“Mrs. Lusk don't count,” said I.

“I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky.” And the Virginian fell silent again.

Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a good shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They would have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one or another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters, and brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin, more original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an ace of clubs. “I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a shootin'-match,” he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more objectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents of game--antelope, sage-chickens--but, shyness intervening, he left them outside the door, and entering, dressed in all the “Sunday” that he had, would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emerging from one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of his tormentors.

“If she don't notice your clothes, Texas,” said the Virginian, “just mention them to her.”

“Now yer've done offended her,” shrilled Manassas Donohoe. “She heard that.”

“She'll hear you singin' sooprano,” said Honey Wiggin. “It's good this country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and corrupt your morals.”

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

But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no one. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he had gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But more than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye to Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. “She can have it,” he told me. “I like her.” Then he stole a look at his guardian. “If they get married and send me back to mother,” said he, “I'll run away sure.” So school and this old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky, who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted chickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them with equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.

“This time right!” he exclaimed. “And I want her to know Billy some more before he goes to Bear Creek.”

“Ah, Bear Creek!” said Billy, acidly. “Why can't I stay home?”

“Home sounds kind o' slick,” said Lin to me. “Don't it, now? 'Home' is closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral, and ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're good, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her about Laramie.”

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

Lin nudged me, laughing. “I can rile him every time about Laramie,” said he, affectionately. “I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all--right after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy--Jessamine says to me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker writin' to her about her brother and her sorrow.” Lin paused. “And about me. I can't never tell you--but he said a heap I didn't deserve. And he told her about me picking up Billy in Denver streets that time, and doing for him because his own home was not a good one. Governor Barker wrote Jessamine all that; and she said, 'Why did you never tell me?' And I said it wasn't anything to tell. And she just said to me, 'It shall be as if he was your son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!”

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

“Well, well, kid,” said the cow-puncher, patting his head, “yu' needn't to, I guess.”

But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we went over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots, a rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently on one.

“Scanty room for company!” Jessamine said. “But we must make out this way--till we have another way.” She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face darkened. “Do you know,” she pursued to me, “with all those chickens Mr. McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here.”

“Livin' or dead do you want 'em?” inquired Lin.

“Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--”