Jessamine turned her wondering eyes on Lin. "You did do this," she repeated, but this time with extraordinary quietness.
"Yes," said he. "And I am plumb proud of it."
She gave a rich laugh of pleasure and amusement; a long laugh, and stopped. "Did anybody ever!" she said.
"We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see," said the cow-puncher.
"Oh no! oh no!" Jessamine declared. "Though how am I ever to thank you?"
"By not argufying," Lin answered.
"Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you are crazy."
"I've been waiting to hear yu' say that," said the complacent McLean. "I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it."
"And I expect I'll go, too," said the girl.
"I'll be plumb proud to have yu'," the cow-puncher assented.
"I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now," said Jessamine, again laughing, sunny and defiant.
"You bet you are!" said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into the station serenely. "You can't get used to new ideas in a minute," he remarked to me. "I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why," he broke out, impetuously, "I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble inconvenient—Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'—but how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on that ride!" (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) "Got to Separ. Got the sheriff's address—the sheriff that saw her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit shooting your water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?' says the superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the agent, he flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him and went to rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation to the boys to be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can choose between Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move one of 'em from Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good, too. He said a man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a decent woman would be respected there, and the only question was if she could conduct the business. So I spoke up about Shawhan, and when the whole idea began to soak into that superintendent his eyeballs jingled and he looked as wise as a work-ox. 'I'll see her,' says he. And he's going to see her."
"Well," said I, "you deserve success after thinking of a thing like that! You're wholly wasted punching cattle. But she's going to Chicago. By eleven o'clock she will have passed by your superintendent."
"Why, so she will!" said Lin, affecting surprise.
He baffled me, and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly failed to gratify her.
Her firmness about going was sincere, but she had looked for more dissuasion; and this sprightly abettal of her departure seemed to leave something vacant in the ceremonies She fell singularly taciturn during supper at the Hotel Brunswick, and presently observed, "I hope I shall see Mr. Donohoe."
"Texas?" said Lin. "I expect they'll have tucked him in bed by now up at the ranch. The little fellow is growing yet."
"He can walk round a freight-car all night," said Miss Buckner, stoutly. "I've always wanted to thank him for looking after me."
Mr. McLean smiled elaborately at his plate
"Well, if he's not actually thinking he'll tease me!" cried out Jessamine "Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean, you surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!"
"Shucks!" began Lin.
But her laughter routed him. "Maybe you didn't notice you were young," she said. "But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe even the girls kind o' did!"
"She's hard to beat, ain't she?" inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made herself bright again with a special farewell for each acquaintance.
"Don't you ride any more cow-catchers," she warned Billy Lusk, "or I'll have to come back and look after you."
"You said you and me were going for a ride, and we ain't," shouted the long-memoried nine-year-old. "You will," murmured Mr. McLean, oracularly.
As the train's pace quickened he did not step off, and Miss Buckner cried "Jump!"
"Too late," said he, placidly. Then he called to me, "I'm hard to beat, too!" So the train took them both away, as I might have guessed was his intention all along.
"Is that marriage again?" said Billy, anxiously. "He wouldn't tell me nothing."
"He's just seeing Miss Buckner as far as Edgeford," said the agent. "Be back to-morrow."
"Then I don't see why he wouldn't take me along," Billy complained. And Separ laughed.
But the lover was not back to-morrow. He was capable of anything, gossip remarked, and took up new themes. The sun rose and set, the two trains made their daily slight event and gathering; the water-tank, glaring bulkily in the sun beaconed unmolested; and the agent's natural sleep was unbroken by pistols, for the cow-boys did not happen to be in town. Separ lay a clot of torpor that I was glad to leave behind me for a while. But news is a strange, permeating substance, and it began to be sifted through the air that Tubercle was going to God's country.
That is how they phrased it in cow-camp, meaning not the next world, but the Eastern States.
"It's certainly a shame him leaving after we've got him so good and used to us," said the Virginian.
"We can't tell him good-bye," said Honey Wiggin. "Separ'll be slow."
"We can give his successor a right hearty welcome," the Virginian suggested.
"That's you!" said Honey. "Schemin' mischief away ahead. You're the leadin' devil in this country, and just because yu' wear a faithful-looking face you're tryin' to fool a poor school-marm."
"Yes," drawled the Southerner, "that's what I'm aiming to do."
So now they were curious about the successor, planning their hearty welcome for that official, and were encouraged in this by Mr. McLean. He reappeared in the neighborhood with a manner and conversation highly casual.
"Bring your new wife?" they inquired.
"No; she preferred Kentucky," Lin said.
"Bring the old one?"