d her rescuer, and of maidenly hope to see him again.

To that river crossing he came again, alone, when the days were growing
short. The ford was dry sand, and the stream a winding lane of
shingle. He found a pool,--pools always survive the year round in this
stream,--and having watered his pony, he lunched near the spot to
which he had borne the frightened passenger that day. Where the flowing
current had been he sat, regarding the now extremely safe channel.

"She cert'nly wouldn't need to grip me so close this mawnin'," he said,
as he pondered over his meal. "I reckon it will mightily astonish her
when I tell her how harmless the torrent is lookin'." He held out to
his pony a slice of bread matted with sardines, which the pony expertly
accepted. "You're a plumb pie-biter you Monte," he continued. Monte
rubbed his nose on his master's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust you with
berries and cream. No, seh; not though yu' did rescue a drownin' lady."

Presently he tightened the forward cinch, got in the saddle, and the
pony fell into his wise mechanical jog; for he had come a long way, and
was going a long way, and he knew this as well as the man did.

To use the language of Cattle Land, steers had "jumped to seventy-five."
This was a great and prosperous leap in their value. To have flourished
in that golden time you need not be dead now, nor even middle-aged; but
it is Wyoming mythology already--quite as fabulous as the high-jumping
cow. Indeed, people gathered together and behaved themselves much in
the same pleasant and improbable way. Johnson County, and Natrona, and
Converse, and others, to say nothing of the Cheyenne Club, had been
jumping over the moon for some weeks, all on account of steers; and
on the strength of this vigorous price of seventy-five, the Stanton
Brothers were giving a barbecue at the Goose Egg outfit, their ranch on
Bear Creek. Of course the whole neighborhood was bidden, and would come
forty miles to a man; some would come further--the Virginian was coming
a hundred and eighteen. It had struck him--rather suddenly, as shall be
made plain--that he should like to see how they were getting along up
there on Bear Creek. "They," was how he put it to his acquaintances. His
acquaintances did not know that he had bought himself a pair of trousers
and a scarf, unnecessarily excellent for such a general visit. They
did not know that in the spring, two days after the adventure with the
stage, he had learned