f heavy shipping; to-night their work would
be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner.
To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail,
made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to
the corrals.

A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here was
Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a
stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.

"Thought you were at school," said I.

"Ah, school's quit," returned Billy, and changed the subject. "Say,
Lin's hunting you. He's angling to eat at the hotel. I'm grubbing with
the outfit." And Billy resumed his specious activity.

Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently
reminded him of politics. "Wall Street," he was explaining to the agent,
"has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they're moving on. Feeding
along to Chicago. We want--" Here he noticed me and, dragging his
gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.

"Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me," I remarked.

"Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted."

"Didn't know you were a father, Mr. McLean," simpered the agent.

Lin fixed his eye on the man. "And you don't know it now," said he. Then
he removed his eye. "Let's grub," he added to me. My friend did not walk
to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. "Billy
is a good kid," he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small
mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a
matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. "He's dead stuck on being a
cow-puncher," he presently said.

"Some day--" I began.

"He don't want to wait that long," Lin said, and smiled affectionately.
"And, anyhow, what is 'some day'? Some day we punchers will not be here.
The living will be scattered, and the dead--well, they'll be all right.
Have yu' studied the wire fence? It's spreading to catch us like nets do
the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,"
stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I
know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. "But
Billy," Lin resumed, "has agreed to school again when it starts up in
the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to." Affection crept
anew over the cow-puncher's face. "He can learn books with the quickest
when he wants, that Be