ght a change into the wilderness air. The feel
of it struck cold upon the free spirits of the cow-punchers, and they
told each other that, what with women and children and wire fences, this
country would not long be a country for men. They stopped for a meal at
an old comrade's. They looked over his gate, and there he was pattering
among garden furrows.

"Pickin' nosegays?" inquired the Virginian and the old comrade asked
if they could not recognize potatoes except in the dish. But he grinned
sheepishly at them, too, because they knew that he had not always lived
in a garden. Then he took them into his house, where they saw an object
crawling on the floor with a handful of sulphur matches. He began to
remove the matches, but stopped in alarm at the vociferous result; and
his wife looked in from the kitchen to caution him about humoring little
Christopher.

When she beheld the matches she was aghast but when she saw her baby
grow quiet in the arms of the Virginian, she smiled at that cowpuncher
and returned to her kitchen.

Then the Virginian slowly spoke again: "How many little strangers have
yu' got, James?"

"Only two."

"My! Ain't it most three years since yu' maried? Yu' mustn't let time
creep ahaid o' yu', James."

The father once more grinned at his guests, who themselves turned
sheepish and polite; for Mrs. Westfall came in, brisk and hearty, and
set the meat upon the table. After that, it was she who talked. The
guests ate scrupulously, muttering, "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," in
their plates, while their hostess told them of increasing families upon
Bear Creek, and the expected school-teacher, and little Alfred's early
teething, and how it was time for all of them to become husbands like
James. The bachelors of the saddle listened, always diffident,
but eating heartily to the end; and soon after they rode away in a
thoughtful clump. The wives of Bear Creek were few as yet, and the homes
scattered; the schoolhouse was only a sprig on the vast face of a world
of elk and bear and uncertain Indians; but that night, when the earth
near the fire was littered with the cow-punchers' beds, the Virginian
was heard drawling to himself: "Alfred and Christopher. Oh, sugar!"

They found pleasure in the delicately chosen shade of this oath. He also
recited to them a new verse about how he took his Looloo girl to the
schoolhouse for to learn her A B C; and as it was quite original and
unprintable, the camp laughed an