“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—”
“Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!” And we all laughed together.
“You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?” spoke Billy, suddenly, from his stool.
“I'd like to see anybody try to make you?” exclaimed Jessamine. “Who says any such thing?”
“Lin did,” said Billy.
Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. “What a way to tease him!” she said. “And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!”
“I never thought,” said Lin the boisterous. “I wouldn't have.”
“Come sit here, Billy,” said Jessamine. “Whenever he teases, you tell me, and we'll make him behave.”
“Honest?” persisted Billy.
“Shake hands on it,” said Jessamine.
“Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?”
“Honest! Honest!” And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.
“Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either,” stated Billy, relieved.
Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
“Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.”
Jessamine gazed at Lin.
“It's simple,” said the cow-puncher. “It's all right.”
But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
“It's all right,” repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and looking down. “Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.”
“Billy?” whispered Jessamine. “Then you—But his name is Lusk!”
“Course it is,” said Billy. “Father and mother are living in Laramie.”
“It's all straight,” said the cow-puncher. “I never saw her till three years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only—only—only it don't come easy to tell.”
I rose. “Miss Buckner,” said I, “he will tell you. But he will not tell you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret. It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.”
But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on Lin, and her face remained white.
I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith, ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could have told Jessamine the same old story myself—or almost; but what had it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow, seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.
“She's a-crying,” said he.
I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: “I'm sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.”
“I don't believe she's mad,” I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket, he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him. But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened, and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
“What?” I said at length.
I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him gently. “Wake, son,” said he. “You and I must get to our camp now.”
“Now?” said Billy. “Can't we wait till morning?”
“No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the saddles on.” As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. “She is in there,” he said. “She's in there. So near.” He looked, and turned to the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. “I understand her words,” he continued. “Her words, the meaning of them. But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't blame me!” he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.
“Lin,” I answered, “she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.”
“That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long—and I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she says I have a wife livin'.”
“That is nonsense,” I declared.
“Yu' mustn't say that,” said he. “She don't claim she's a wife, either. She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and that she's honest, and loves me true—” His voice broke for a moment. “She said she'd wait.”
“You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied,” I said. “But perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry—”
“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of something back of law. She said she'd wait—always. And when I took it in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and the chickens—well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and waked Billy to clear out and quit.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room. Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!”
“Man, man!” said I, “go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll wait too—always!”
“Would yu'?”
“Look!” I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.
“Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!” she sobbed. She could not withhold this last good-bye.
I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone, flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing over Separ.