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 buoyantinnocence 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,