We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.
"They've caved!" he shouted.
"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.
"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near. "They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must know all about it. "Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least. "Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and passed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."
He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the station, and, at once remarking, "They're going to leave us alone," sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where some cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail, and here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had got a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate the jests of these rollicking people. "Read it!" they said to me; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroad was going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ's good feeling. "Nothing more," the letter ran, "will be done about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall pass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will prove our genuine desire to benefit that section.
"'Initial outrage,'" quoted one of the agent' large playmates. "Ain't they furgivin'?" "Well," said I, "you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the cow-catcher!" The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.
"We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes," he drawled judicially, "I'd be mad at that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why, your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant." He took the paper from me, and read, sardonically: "'Subsequent vandalisms ... wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad 'Policy of friendship ... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!" And, shaking his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of the agent. "Tubercle," said he (this was their name for the agent, who had told all of us about his lungs), "it ain't your fault we saw their fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late over this joke."
Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box painted "Hotel Brunswick"-- "hotel" in small italics and "Brunswick"in enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.
Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome, and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the line in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by her to see about supper and lodging. At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But with clean straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until five or six. I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door, where the table was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell of the butter that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend the remaining minutes in the air. "I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightened him!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too. "Why," she explained, "I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side are you going to butter your bread this evening?"
"You had smelt it?" said I, still cloudy with surprise. "Yes. Unquestionably. Very rancid." She glanced oddly at me, and, with less fellowship in her tone, said, "I was going to warn you--" when suddenly, down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. "Oh, dear!" she cried, starting up. "There's trouble." "Not trouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be in earnest. And you would be safe here."
"Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we are respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home." The words "Louisville and Nashville" spoke creamily of Blue-grass.
"Unescorted all that way!" I exclaimed.
"Isn't it awful?" said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing the pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And she eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.
"Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."
"Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's English!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered to herself, reprovingly, "If I'm not acting rude!"
"Oh!" said I, rather familiarly.
"It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so free with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and everything-- I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking to--to folks around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose before her, and her eyes grew distant. I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall country girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not "folks around," she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the dark as to them.
"Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as far as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow."
"You've got me all wrong," said I. "I'm not English; I'm not New York. I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"
"Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to most Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you, you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?" "I'd travel my money's length to meet her!" said I.
A wave of pain crossed her face. "Nate didn't know," she said then, lightly. "You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about writing."
Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him! Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and forgiven. "I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage," continued the girl.
"Then I'll have your company on a weary road," said I; for my journey was now to that part of the cattle country.
"To Buffalo?" she said, quickly. "Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is Nate Buckner." She paused. "Then you're not acquainted with him?"
"I may have seen him," I answered, slowly. "But faces and names out here come and go."
I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week, waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart; but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the stage went soon after supper.
"Now isn't that a bother?" said she, when I answered that it did not start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. "Never mind," she continued, briskly; "I'm used to things. I'll just sit up somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure all that shooting's only jollification?" "Certain," I said. "But I'll go and see."
"They always will have their fun," said she. "But I hate to have a poor boy get hurt--even him deserving it!"
"They use pistols instead of fire-crackers," said I. "But you must never sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do."
"Why, you're real kind!" she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed, wondering what I ought to do.
Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of its name. Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless; and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees before it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees. There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where you might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the little station--some seven shanties all told. Between them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midst ran the farvanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a great string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of the agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to telegraph for some additional cars.
"I'm dead on to you!" squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought it was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country, wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey? They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them should be so tactless. "If we don't get him used to us," observed the Virginian, "he and his pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man."
Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it. The news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater, and playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs improved, and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand. But the company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated, which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ. Now what should authority do upon these free plains, this wilderness of do-as-you-please, where mere breathing the air was like inebriation? The large, headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselves resisted. Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his death accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes. They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them forever from baseness at least. So the company, concluding such things must be endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrong the letter went. All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for example) part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in town.
It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner. To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the corrals.
A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here was Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
"Thought you were at school," said I.
"Ah, school's quit," returned Billy, and changed the subject. "Say, Lin's hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with the outfit." And Billy resumed his specious activity.
Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently reminded him of politics. "Wall Street," he was explaining to the agent, "has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding along to Chicago. We want--" Here he noticed me and, dragging his gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
"Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me," I remarked. "Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted."
"Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean," simpered the agent. Lin fixed his eye on the man. "And you don't know it now," said he. Then he removed his eye. "Let's grub," he added to me. My friend did not walk to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. "Billy is a good kid," he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. "He's dead stuck on being a cow-puncher," he presently said.
"Some day--" I began.
"He don't want to wait that long," Lin said, and smiled affectionately. "And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here. The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right. Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers," stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. "But Billy," Lin resumed, "has agreed to school again when it starts up in the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to." Affection crept anew over the cow-puncher's face. "He can learn books with the quickest when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he'd ought to have a regular mother till--till I can do for him, yu' know. It's onwholesome him seeing and hearing the boys--and me, and me when I forget!--but shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted. But when I found him the little calf could run and notice like everything!"
"I should hate your contract, Lin," said I. "Adopting's a touch-and-go business even when a man has a home."
"I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and then, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him hunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man foreman--and he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see." "He's asking one hard enough," said I, digressing.
"Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--" said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open, hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at me again, he said: "Don't you get off any more truck about eldest son and that, will yu', friend? The boys are joshing me now--not that I care for what might easy enough be so, but there's Billy. Maybe he'd not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o' set on--well--he didn't have a good time till he shook that home of his, and I'm going to make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him, if I can. Now you'll drop joshing, won't yu'?" His forehead was moist over getting the thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
"And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?" said I.
He laughed shortly. "She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while, you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here" (Lin laid his hand on my shoulder), "if you can't expect a good time for yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o' reason, can't yu'?"
I fairly opened my mouth at him.
"Oh yes," he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his hand off my shoulder); "I've been thinking a wonderful lot since we met last. I guess I know some things yu' haven't got to yet yourself-- Why, there's a girl!"
"That there is!" said I. "And certainly the world owes her a better--" "She's a fine-looker," interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered "Supper!" with a shrill croak, at which the girl rose. "Come!" said Lin, "let's hurry!"
But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the sister's devoted journey.
"Nate Buckner!" he exclaimed. "Him with a decent sister!"
"It's the other way round," said I. "Her with him for a brother!"
"He goes to the penitentiary this week," said Lin. "He had no more cash to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?"
"I've not told her."
"Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her--no, sir; it's not right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her gently."
"Death's different," said I.
"Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick as the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that. If you don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself." And Mr. McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have never been quite sure what--perhaps reversion to the native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:
"Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance."
"If it's too rich for you," croaked the enraged proprietor, "use axle-dope." The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin, to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying, in his Texas idiom,
"Have butter."
He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on "butter" cracked an octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only shake her head at the plate.
Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose for none," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most to death." "I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slicker rubbed outside than swallered."
At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house. "You don't seem to know anything," observed Mr. McLean. "What toy-shop did you escape from?"
"Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head in from the kitchen.
"Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?" screamed the boy, furiously. "Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!" And he flounced out with his young boots.
All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked, "Who's hiring him?"
"The C. Y. outfit," said another.
"Half-circle L.," a third corrected.
"I seen one like him onced," said the first, taking his hat from beneath his chair. "Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!" And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also silently dispersed. Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to the lady.
Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly ceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just had to have my laugh."
"That's all right, m'm," said he; "don't mention it."
"For that boy, you know--"
"I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him."
"Now, please don't! Why--why--you were every bit as bad!" Miss Buckner pealed out, joyously. "It was the two of you. Oh dear!"
Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. "I had no--I didn't go to--"
"Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well, and--I know I ought to behave better!"
"No, yu' oughtn't!" said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of deprecation, "You'll think us plumb ignorant."
"You know enough to be kind to folks," said she.
"We'd like to."
"It's the only thing makes the world go round!" she declared, with an emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she caught herself up, and said gayly to me, "And where's that house you were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?"
"I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet," said I.
"Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me."
"We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ."
"Oh, I am no--tenderfoot, don't you call them?" She whipped out her pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl behind it. "My!" he said, at length, almost in a whisper, "she's got the drop on me!" "I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours," said Miss Buckner. "But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards." And she handed it to him for inspection.
He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. "My!" he murmured again. "Why, shucks!" He looked at Miss Buckner with stark rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond, unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said with pride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professional drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun."
"You'd not trade, though," said she, "for all your flattery."
"Will yu' trade?" pounced Lin. "Won't yu'?"
"Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you're thoughtless. How could a girl like me ever hold that awful .45 Colt steady?"
"She knows the brands, too!" cried Lin, in ecstasy. "See here," he remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, "we're losing time right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a lady, and I'll bring her along."
I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his room to rights. But we need not have hurried ourselves. Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away skulked poor Texas, alone. This boy's name was, like himself, of the somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.
As I came towards the new friends they did not appear to be joking, and on seeing me Miss Buckner said to Lin, "Did he know?"
Lin hesitated.
"You did know!" she exclaimed, but lost her resentment at once, and continued, very quietly and with a friendly tone, "I reckon you don't like to hav