der put his head on one side and gave a
grotesque impression of outraged decorum--"pants is considered unwomanly."

"Leander! Leander!" came in accusing accents from the kitchen.

"Run!" gasped Mrs. Dax's handmaiden; "don't let her catch us chinnin'."

Mary Carmichael ran round one side of the house as she was bidden, but,
like Lot's wife, could not resist the temptation of looking back. Leander,
with incredible rapidity, grabbed two clothes-pins off the line, clutched
a dish-towel, shook it. "Comin'! comin'!" he called, as he went through
the farce of rehanging it.

The lonesomeness of plain and foot-hill, the utter lack of the human
element that gives to this country its character of penetrating
desolation, had been changed while Mary Carmichael forgathered with
Leander by the clothes-line. From the four quarters of the compass, men in
sombreros, flannel shirts, and all manner of strange habiliments came
galloping over the roads as if their horses were as keen on reaching Dax's
as their riders. They came towards the house at full tilt, their horses
stretching flat with ears laid back viciously, and Mary, who was unused to
the tricks of cow-ponies, expected to see them ride through the front
door, merely by way of demonstrating their sense of humor. Not so; the
little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed to the door and
stopped short in a full gallop; as a bit of staccato equestrianism it was
superb.

And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship, this curveting,
prancing, galloping revival of knightly tourney effects was
apparent--Judith Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed her riding
clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to which the ladies took
exception was now concealed by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids
of black hair had been twisted high on her head. She was well worth a trip
across the alkali wastes to see. The room was packed with men. One
unconsciously got the impression that a fire, a fight, or some
crowd-collecting casualty had happened. Above the continual clinking of
spurs there arose every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these
United States are capable. There is no Western dialect, properly speaking.
Men bring their modes of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota, as
the case may be, but their figures of speech, which give an essential
picturesqueness to their language, are almost entirely local--the cattle
and sheep industries, prospecting, t