've got
to make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!"

His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops
with the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and
he struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall
some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made
him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently
watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his
speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they
took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and
wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and
met face to face with Mr. McLean.

"The boys are seein' after my horse," Lin rapidly began, "and I've got
to meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu'
see, and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--" Here
Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. "Doc,
I'd like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know."

The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind,
and was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a
couple of dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an
imperfect honesty that he said, "You'll help me a heap."

And Lin, quite sincere, replied, "Thank yu'."

So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief
Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now
the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man
has been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall;
the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as
young as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known
the cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without
breeding contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder
and drew him among the petticoats and toys.

Christmas filled the