self, and Angus
must sure have the makings of a good one, so he persuades him to stay
round for a while, working at easy jobs that couldn't stack him up, and
later he sent him to Omaha with the bunch in charge of a trainload of
steers.

"The trip back was when his romance begun. Angus had kept fancy-free up
to that time, being willing enough but thoroughly cautious. Do you
remember the eating-house at North Platte, Nebraska? The night train
from Omaha would reach there at breakfast time and you'd get out in the
frosty air, hungry as a confirmed dyspeptic, and rush into the big red
building past the man that was rapidly beating on a gong with one of
these soft-ended bass-drum sticks. My, the good hot smells inside!
Tables already loaded with ham and eggs and fried oysters and fried
chicken and sausage and fried potatoes and steaks and hot biscuits and
corn bread and hot cakes and regular coffee--till you didn't know which
to begin on, and first thing you knew you had your plate loaded with too
many things--but how you did eat!--and yes, thank you, another cup of
coffee, and please pass the sirup this way. And no worry about the
train pulling out, because there the conductor is at that other table
and it can't go without him, so take your time--and about three more of
them big fried oysters, the only good fried ones I ever had in the
world! To this day I get hungry thinking of that North Platte breakfast,
and mad when I go into the dining-car as we pass there and try to get
the languid mulatto to show a little enthusiasm.

"Well, they had girls at that eating-house. Of course no one ever
noticed 'em much, being too famished and busy. You only knew in a
general way that females was passing the food along. But Angus actually
did notice Ellabelle, though it must have been at the end of the meal,
mebbe when she was pouring the third cup. Ellabelle was never right
pretty to my notion, but she had some figure and kind of a sad dignity,
and her brown hair lacked the towers and minarets and golden domes that
the other girls built with their own or theirs by right of purchase. And
she seems to have noticed Angus from the very first. Angus saw that when
she wasn't passing the fried chicken or the hot biscuits along, even for
half a minute, she'd pick up a book from the window sill and glance
studiously at its pages. He saw the book was called 'Lucile.' And he
looked her over some more--between mouthfuls, of course--the
neat-fitti