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 s