use it could never have known a mother.

"Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?" inquired a slow
voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.

"Male parent!" scoffed the prompt Scipio. "Ain't you heard about THEM
yet?"

"Them? Was there two?"

"Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate."

"Why, the piebald son of a gun!" responded the Virginian, sweetly. "I
got them steers through all right," he added to me. "Sorry to see yu'
get so out o' breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin' any?"

"Who's he?" inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.

The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose.
The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and
the train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers
delivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose,
his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He
wore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the
way to Billings was smooth now, also.

"Who's he?" Scipio repeated.

But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some
one was reciting "And it's my night to howl."

"We'll all howl when we get to Rawhide," said some other one; and they
howled now.

"These hyeh steam cyars," said the Virginian to Scipio, "make a man's
language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel." Of Shorty he took no
notice whatever--no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.

"So yu' heard me speakin' to the express," said Scipio. "Well, I guess,
sometimes I--See here," he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely
considering him, "I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You
didn't catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as--"

"I noticed," said the Virginian, "thinkin' came quicker to yu' than
runnin'."

I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my
way of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my
valise.

"Oh, I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us!" said Scipio. "Observin'
somebody else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're a
philosopher, but maybe there's a pair of us drawd in this deal."

Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. "By your laigs,"
said he, "you are used to the saddle."

"I'd be called used to it, I expect."

"By your hands," said the Southerner, again, "you ain't roped many
steers lately. Been