f screaming, she said, after the suppression of a gasp or two:

"Thank you so much, but I won't detain you any longer. Your information
makes Lost Trail even more interesting than I had expected."

Besides, Miss Carmichael had a faint suspicion that this might be a
preconcerted plan to terrify the "lady tenderfoot," and she prided herself
on being equal to the situation. The time at her disposal before the stage
would embark on that unknown sea of prairies she spent in the delectable
pastime of shopping. The financial and social interests of the town seemed
to converge in Hugous & Co.'s "trading store," where Miss Carmichael
invested in an extra package of needles for the mere excitement of being
one of the shoppers, though her aunt Adelaide had stocked the little
plaid-silk work-bag to repletion with every variety of needle known to
woman. She pricked up her ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made
by the cow-boys for their camp-larders--devilled ham, sardines, canned
tomatoes heading the list as prime favorites. Did these strapping border
lads live by the fruit of the tin alone? Apparently yes, with the
sophisticated accompaniment of soda biscuit, to judge by the quantity of
baking-powder they invested in--literally pounds of it. Men in any other
condition of life would have died of slow poisoning as the result of it.

There were other customers at Hugous' that morning besides the spurred and
booted cow-puncher and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder. That
restless emigrant class, whose origin, as a class, lay in the community of
its own uncertain schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid, lavish
promises, called them from their thriftless farms in the South and their
gray cabins in New England. They began their journeying towards the land
of promise long before the Indians had ever seen the shrieking
"fire-wagon." All day they would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the
sun that hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point, the
horizon, their only guide. But the makeshifts of the wagon life were not
without charm. They began to wander in quest of they knew not precisely
what, and from these vague beginnings there had sprung into existence that
nomadic population that was once such a feature of the far West, but is
now going the way of the Indians and the cow-boys.

This breathing-space in the long journey had for them the stimulus of a
holiday-making. They bought their sides of bacon