"She's a fine-looker," interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered "Supper!" with a shrill croak, at which the girl rose.
"Come!" said Lin, "let's hurry!"
But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the sister's devoted journey.
"Nate Buckner!" he exclaimed. "Him with a decent sister!"
"It's the other way round," said I. "Her with him for a brother!"
"He goes to the penitentiary this week," said Lin. "He had no more cash to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved time and money. How did she act when yu' told her?"
"I've not told her."
"Not? Too kind o' not your business? Well, well! You'd ought to know better 'n me. Only it don't seem right to let her—no, sir; it's not right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg's husband would like dearly to make him dead), you'd not let her come slap up against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her gently."
"Death's different," said I.
"Shucks! And she's to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a shaved head? How d' yu' know she mightn't hate that worse 'n if he'd been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn't. Think of how it'll be. Quick as the stage pulls up front o' the Buffalo post-office, plump she'll be down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd around staring. Why, we can't let her do that; she can't do that. If you don't feel so interfering, I'm good for this job myself." And Mr. McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.
The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at a distance, and Mr. McLean's best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have never been quite sure what—perhaps reversion to the native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean's eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily:
"Say, friends, that butter ain't in no trance."
"If it's too rich for you," croaked the enraged proprietor, "use axle-dope."
The company continued gravely feeding, while I struggled to preserve the decorum of sadness, and Miss Buckner's face was also unsteady. But sternness mantled in the countenance of Mr. McLean, until the harmless boy, embarrassed to pieces, offered the untasted smelling-dish to Lin, to me, helped himself, and finally thrust the plate at the girl, saying, in his Texas idiom,
"Have butter."
He spoke in the shell voice of adolescence, and on "butter" cracked an octave up into the treble. Miss Buckner was speechless, and could only shake her head at the plate.
Mr. McLean, however, thought she was offended. "She wouldn't choose for none," he said to the youth, with appalling calm. "Thank yu' most to death."
"I guess," fluted poor Texas, in a dove falsetto, "it would go slicker rubbed outside than swallered."
At this Miss Buckner broke from the table and fled out of the house.
"You don't seem to know anything," observed Mr. McLean. "What toy-shop did you escape from?"
"Wind him up! Wind him up!" said the proprietor, sticking his head in from the kitchen.
"Ah, what's the matter with this outfit?" screamed the boy, furiously. "Can't yu' leave a man eat? Can't yu' leave him be? You make me sick!" And he flounced out with his young boots.
All the while the company fed on unmoved. Presently one remarked,
"Who's hiring him?"
"The C. Y. outfit," said another.
"Half-circle L.," a third corrected.
"I seen one like him onced," said the first, taking his hat from beneath his chair. "Up in the Black Hills he was. Eighteen seventy-nine. Gosh!" And he wandered out upon his business. One by one the others also silently dispersed.
Upon going out, Lin and I found the boy pacing up and down, eagerly in talk with Miss Buckner. She had made friends with him, and he was now smoothed down and deeply absorbed, being led by her to tell her about himself. But on Lin's approach his face clouded, and he made off for the corrals, displaying a sullen back, while I was presenting Mr. McLean to the lady.
Overtaken by his cow-puncher shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly ceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just had to have my laugh."
"That's all right, m'm," said he; "don't mention it."
"For that boy, you know—"
"I'll fix him, m'm. He'll not insult yu' no more. I'll speak to him."
"Now, please don't! Why—why—you were every bit as bad!" Miss Buckner pealed out, joyously. "It was the two of you. Oh dear!"
Mr. McLean looked crestfallen. "I had no—I didn't go to—"
"Why, there was no harm! To see him mean so well and you mean so well, and—I know I ought to behave better!"
"No, yu' oughtn't!" said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of deprecation, "You'll think us plumb ignorant."
"You know enough to be kind to folks," said she.
"We'd like to."
"It's the only thing makes the world go round!" she declared, with an emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already. But she caught herself up, and said gayly to me, "And where's that house you were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?"
"I'm afraid the foundations aren't laid yet," said I.
"Now you gentlemen needn't bother about me."
"We'll have to, m'm. You ain't used to Separ."
"Oh, I am no—tenderfoot, don't you call them?" She whipped out her pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.
This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin's features went a glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl behind it. "My!" he said, at length, almost in a whisper, "she's got the drop on me!"
"I reckon I'd be afraid to shoot that one of yours," said Miss Buckner. "But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards." And she handed it to him for inspection.
He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over. "My!" he murmured again. "Why, shucks!" He looked at Miss Buckner with stark rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond, unconscious thumb. "You hold it just as steady as I could," he said with pride, and added, insinuatingly, "I could learn yu' the professional drop in a morning. This here is a little dandy gun."
"You'd not trade, though," said she, "for all your flattery."