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