rouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be in
earnest. And you would be safe here."

"Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we
are respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home."
The words "Louisville and Nashville" spoke creamily of Blue-grass.

"Unescorted all that way!" I exclaimed.

"Isn't it awful?" said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
the pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And she
eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.

"Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."

"Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
English!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
to herself, reprovingly, "If I'm not acting rude!"

"Oh!" said I, rather familiarly.

"It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so
free with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and
everything--I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking
to--to folks around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose
before her, and her eyes grew distant.

I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall country
girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not "folks around,"
she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
dark as to them.

"Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as far
as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow."

"You've got me all wrong," said I. "I'm not English; I'm not New York.
I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when
you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"

"Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
most Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit
you, you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?"

"I'd travel my money's