their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
keeping his promise to see the
bishop with the girl of
yesterday; and
while he
gravely looked at the
bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
to
circle" target="_blank" title="vt.环绕;包围">
encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
from round his neck.
The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it
prolonged a few closing chords while the
bishop paused before his
address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain
suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific
Railroad, while it had delivered him
correctly at Green River, had
despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
Without citing chapter and verse the
bishop began:
"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him, and had
compassion, and ran, and fell on his
neck and kissed him."
The
bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
to draw from it a
discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
presence he found himself for one
solitary morning. He spoke
unlike many
clergymen. His words were
chiefly those which the people round him used,
and his voice was more like
earnest talking than preaching.
Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher
loosenslightly, and
she looked at him. But he was looking at the
bishop, no longer
gravelybut with wide-open eyes, alert. When the
narrative reached the elder
brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her
companion and let him
watch the
bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
hymns vindictively. The
bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and
the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not
discern how
that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
and so did a
corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people
dispersed through the great
sunshine to their dwellings, and the
cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
"What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?" inquired the lady, after a
hundred yards.
"Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?" asked Lin, absently.
"No, indeed. What's them?"
"Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too." Mr. McLean fell silent
again.
"I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye," said
Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
"Only," protested Sabina, "I ain't used to gentlemen
taking me out and--
well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness."
But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.
Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed
across the many little
running channels which lead water through that
thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind
them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled
to a toy village.
"My! but it's far to everywheres here," exclaimed Sabina, "and it's
little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the
talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?"
"That's Little Wind River Canyon," said the young man. "Feel like goin'
there, Miss Stone?"
"Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's."
So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
"When do your folks eat supper?" inquired Lin.
"Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on."
"How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?"
Lin asked.
"What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day," said
the lady.
"Only if we try to make that
canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
colonel's table," Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. "That
is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'."
"You're the teasingest man--" said Miss Stone, pouting. "I might have
knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked."
"Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was
desirous of campin'
out to-night."
"Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!" and Sabina giggled.
A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
the next rise of ground,
taking a final wide sail out of sight.
"Something like them partridges used to," said Lin, musingly.
"Partridges?" inquired Sabina.
"Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess."
Presently they dismounted and sought the
stream bank.
"We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times," said Lin, his
wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
and
bronze face, against which the young
mustache showed to its full
advantage.
"I expect you used to dance a lot," remarked Sabina, for a subject.
"Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?"
Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
"Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?" she inquired next.
"Why, sure," said Lin, waking for a moment; "but I like your color best.
A girl's eyes will
mostly beat a man's."
"Indeed, I don't think so!" exclaimed poor Sabina, too much
expectant to
perceive the fatal note of
routine with which her
transient admirer
pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
"Never?" said he. "It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in July--
around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've
swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston."
He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
left him.
"I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?" he
said.
Miss Stone was at a loss.
"I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston."
Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the
farthestjourney from the post that he intended to make--the
farthest from the
post and her.
"I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?" said she.
"I ain't got no folks," replied Lin, "barring a brother. I expect he is
taking good care of himself."
"Don't you correspond?"
"Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
nothin'."
Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but
learned that they had not.
It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her
saddle she
noticed him step to his own.
"Why, I didn't know you were lame!" cried she.
"Shucks!" said Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had
sprung on his
horse,
ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
measure of his activity.
"That's how," said he; and they took their
homeward way galloping. "No,"
Lin continued, "Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough
for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
now. Whoop ye!" he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a
jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
she was not looking, upon which she very
properly slapped him; and he
took the horses to the
stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found
the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of
fat pork. But his
appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that
inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury
clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found
others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles
from the railway, and men there were many and girls were few.
The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up
beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
"Don't get full, Lin," said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
store.
"My plans ain't settled that far yet," replied Mr. McLean.
"Leave it out of them," said the voice of the
bishop, laughing, inside
the stage.
It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the
trumpet on the parade
ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
flag grow small, saw the
circle of steam rising away down by the hot
springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a
bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
over the whole rose the mountains to the west,
serene, lifting into the
clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the
trumpet.
"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.
"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a
month, I guess."
He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were?
But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom
of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses
decided it was a
suitable place to stay. It was the
bishop who persuaded them to change
their minds. He told the driver to give up
beating, and unharness. Then
they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the
bishopproving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed
through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching
Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That afternoon the
stage put its passengers down on the railroad
platform at Green River;
this was the route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of
frozen passengers led to its
abandonment. The
bishop was going west. His
robes had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then
laughed
vigorously in the baggage-room.
"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but I
can't, you see. Not even at this."
The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the
bishop, giving his hand to
Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting full'
out of your plans?"
Lin gave a
slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he said.
"I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added
"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me
whenever we're
in the same place."
He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
up and down the
platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of
the town shone in the
saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music