ldom said a
word, and his face was serious.

Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.

"Hello!" said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. "Have a
good drunk?"

"Changed my mind," said Lin, grinning. "Proves I've got one. Struck
Christmas all right, though."

"Who's your friend?" inquired his Excellency.

"This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at
Sunk Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow."

The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
plain.

"Sufferin Moses!" remarked his Excellency.

SEPAR'S VIGILANTE

We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and
jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were
a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal
lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of
sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising
into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our
undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly,
except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against
Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and
other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's
blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized
by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the
distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.

"They've caved!" he shouted.

"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.

"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
"They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must
know all about it.

"Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least.

"Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
passed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."

He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the
emotion of arrival had evaporated long bef