the coal in the tender and descended and crouched somewhere, and the

sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured eye upon all parties, was just
beginning to explain his errand, when some rider from the crowd cut him

short with an invitation to get down and have a drink. At the word of
ribald endearment by which he named the sheriff, a passing fierceness

hardened the officer's face, and the new yell they gave was less playful.
Waiting no more explanations, they swarmed against the locomotive, and

McLean pulled himself up on the step. The loud talking fell at a stroke
to let business go on, and in this silence came the noise of a

sliding-door. At that I looked, and they all looked, and stood harmless,
like children surprised. For there on the threshold of the freight-car,

with the interior darkness behind her, and touched by the headlight's
diverging rays, stood Jessamine Buckner.

"Will you gentlemen do me a favor?" said she. "Strangers, maybe, have no
right to ask favors, but I reckon you'll let that pass this time. For I'm

real sleepy!" She smiled as she brought this out. "I've been four days
and nights on the cars, and to-morrow I've got to stage to Buffalo. You

see I'll not be here to spoil your fun to-morrow night, and I want boys
to be boys just as much as ever they can. Won't you put it off till

to-morrow night?"
In their amazement they found no spokesman; but I saw Lin busy among

them, and that some word was passing through their groups. After the
brief interval of stand-still they began silently to get on their horses,

while the looming engine glowed and pumped its breath, and the sheriff
and engineer remained as they were.

"Good-night, lady," said a voice among the moving horsemen, but the
others kept their abashed native silence; and thus they slowly filed away

to the corrals. The figures, in their loose shirts and leathern chaps,
passed from the dimness for a moment through the cone of light in front

of the locomotive, so that the metal about them made here and there a
faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing column a

bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the doorway,
and then was gone again into the dimness.

The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that
she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine

moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an
exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and, with

all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely as
the sheriff steamed by.

"I ain't a-going to chase it," said young Billy, struggling.
"I've a mind to cowhide you," said Lin.

But Miss Buckner interposed. "Oh, well," said she, "next time; if he does
it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that way

again if he lets you off?" she asked Billy.
"No," said Billy, looking at her with interest. "Father 'd have cowhided

me anyway, I guess," he added, meditatively.
"Do you call him father?"

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

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

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

"I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin."
"I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride

together. Pleasant dreams!"
She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered

it, remarking: "I like her. What makes her live in a car?"
But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who

took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One
distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left

our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off,
when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his

stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then
leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in

expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid
into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy,

Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping
a watch on it. "So I gave him to understand," said Lin, "that I had no

objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed
I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for his system."

After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought
I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from Lin that the

boy had not gone until the time came for him to join his outfit at the
corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should

find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown, unthanked young
sentinel. "Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till they get their

growth," was his single observation.
But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I

told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note
that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see

him upon her return, to thank him.
"Any Jack can walk around all night," said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.

"Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't," observed the young lady.
This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when

she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and
untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at

the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours
very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.

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

Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still
further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so

winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird
overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely

doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not
prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn.

Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and
woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and

counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to
herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at

me and my well-assumed slumber.
And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot

sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
"I know this road," piped Billy, on the box

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

So I inquired what game he had then shot.
"Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know.

What made Lin marry mother when father was around?"
The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I

instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld
that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met

her on Bear Creek.
The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used to

have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can
have a lot of husbands?"

"It don't especially depend on the place," remarked the driver to me.
"Because," Billy went on, "Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd

had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I
blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss

Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and
Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and

I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert!
Say, am I Lin's, honest?"

"No, Billy, you're not," I said.